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LORD AMHERST. 



AN AMHERST BOOK. 



7\ COLLECTION Or STORIES, POCHS, 
SONGS, SKETCHES 7\ND HISTORICAL 
ARTICLES BY ALUHNI AND UNDER- 
GRADUATES or AHHERST COLLEGE. 



EDITED BY^ 



HERBERT E. RILEY, 

CLASS OF '96. 



ILLUSTRTTTEJX- 



/^<c ,-""/;^^ ''^j*^ 



JUM IS 1896 



NEW vom^---^ xuzi8^^. 

THE REPUBLIC PRESS, 
MDCCCXCVI. 



^ 



u-^ \ 



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Copyright, iSgf), by 
Herbert E. Riley. 



TO 

AH H ERST 

—OLD T^ND NEW— 

THIS WORK or HER L0Y7\L SONS 

IS 

T^rrCCTIONHTELY DEDICATED 



And eastward stilly upon the last green step 
From which the Angel of the Morning Light 
Leaps to the meadow-lands^ fair Amherst sat, 
Capped by her many-windozved colleges. 

f G. HOLLAND. 



INTRODUCTION. 

As long as Thomas Hughes lived, Rugby and 
Oxford could count on the presence and appre- 
ciative sympathy of an " old boy " at all those 
games and great occasions so dear to the under- 
graduate heart. He was a link between their 
youthful world and the larger sphere that was 
before them; for while his distinction and great- 
ness among men lived in common report, the 
sight of his familiar grey head and the glance at 
his still flashing eye were visible proof that he 
had never outgrown the associations of his first 
and freshest interest. 

It is in the confidence that Rugby and Oxford 
are not exceptional in this regard, that the ed- 
itor of the present volume has undertaken to 
give to the alumni and undergraduate public 
these unpretending memorials of Amherst. There 
must be a goodly number in that broad world of 
profession and business to whom the scenes and 
associations, the pursuits and pleasures, of their 
mind's early home are not mere outworn boyish- 
ness or " matter for a flying smile," but a seed- 
plot of pleasant memories, a genial conservator 
of youth and strength even in oncoming age. 



vi INTRODUCTION. 

And the volume contains the earnest of this in a 
proof more tangible than a mere trust. Alumni 
and undergraduates have generously placed at 
his disposal graceful sketches, poems, and music, 
with which he has been enabled to enrich his 
book by names not only cherished by the college, 
but already well known in the world's affairs. 

None of the writers here represented would 
want these sketches to be regarded as specimens 
of what they can do. They are simply the 
means taken for members of the great Amherst 
family, part still residing in these venerable walls, 
part growing young in the memory and influ- 
ence of Alma Mater, to chat together on some 
of the things that form a common stock of inter- 
est, to bring up the place in picture, to raise now 
and then a song. If '' An Amherst Book " may 
prove in some degree a means of fostering unity 
and cordiality of spirit between the older and the 
younger sons of Amherst its object will be ful- 
filled. 

John F. Genung. 



EDITOR'S PRCmCE. 

The kind introduction given this little volume 
bv one who, though not an alumnus, is emi- 
nently worthy of adoption by our Alma Mater, 
leaves to the editor but a brief prefatory word. 
To all the loyal sons and friends of Amherst who 
have contributed to or assisted in the preparation 
of the book the editor extends his sincere thanks ; 
especially to Professor John F. Genung and Pro- 
fessor H. Humphrey Neill, whose literary taste 
and critical judgment have been an invaluable 
aid; and to Mr. William S. Rossiter, '84, for his 
kindly interest and advice in the typographical 
preparation. Prof. Tyler's History of the Col- 
lege and President Hitchcock's " Reminiscences " 
are gratefully acknowledged as sources of infor- 
mation and illustration in the compilation of the 
historical articles. While not intended for the pur- 
pose, " An Amherst Book " may fitly serve as a 
souvenir of Amherst's seventy-fifth birthday an- 
niversary, which will be quietly celebrated dur- 
ing Commencement week. The volume is sub- 
mitted to Amherst men with the hope that they 
will find in the perusal of its pages as much pleas- 
ure as its preparation has afforded the editor. 

Herbert E. Riley. 

Amherst, Mass., 
May, 1896. 



ILLU5TPSTI0N5. 

Page. 

Lord Amherst, Frontispiece. 

The Common, 6 

Pelham Hills, 13 

College Hill in 1821, 20 

P \ President's House, Library, College Hall, ) ^ 

uroup -^ cj^apgi ^^^ Dormitories, . . . . j ^° 

College Hill in 1824, 30 

Bust of Noah Webster, 38 

Chapel Row in 1828, . , 44 

Freshman River, . . . . . . . 51 

The College Well, .56 

The College Grove. 70 

Chapel Row in 1856, 81 

Fraternity Gro.p ] ^^t^^afpa™' ^1"^.^"°°: [ «^ 

Old Uncle, 92 

Barrett Gymnasium and East College, . . . q6 

Amherst College in i860, ...... 98 

Professor Charlie, 103 

P j Walker Hall, College Church, Pratt ) 

'^^^^P "j Gymnasium, Williston Hall, [ ' ' "° 

Sabrina, . 118 

College Hill in 1875, 126 

Julius Hawley Seelye, . . . . . .130 

Peanut John, . 135 

Pratt Field, 140 

-o 4. „;4. r^^ ,,_ ( Delta Upsilon, Chi Psi, ) 
Fraternity Group ] chi Phi, Beta Theta Pii [ • • ^45 

To Hamp, 152 

Fraternity ( Theta Delta Chi, Phi Delta Theta, ) 

Group, . I Phi Gamma Delta, Phi Kappa Psi, f ' ^^^ 

p j Hitchcock Hall, The Octagon, ) ,, 

uroup -j Laboratories, Appleton Cabinet, \ • • ^^^ 

College Hill To-day, 170 

The Avenue of Maples, 177 

Old Bridge At "The Orient," 184 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Hail, Alma Mater, John F. Genung, . . . i 

Amherst : Town and College, Hebert B. Adams, '72, 2 

On Pelham Hills, Le Roy Phillips, '92, . . .12 

The First Milestone, Dwight W. Morrow, '95, . 14 

The True Alumnus, William L. Corbin, '96, . . 19 

Amherst College in 1821, Edward Clark Hood, '97, 21 

A Quatrain, Clyde Fitch, '86, . . . . .25 

A Discovery, Le Roy Phillips, '92, . . . .27 

Amherst in 1824, Edward Clark Hood, '97, . . 29 

Old Amherst, Frank D. Blodgett, '93, . . .32 

Deceitful Appearances, John C. Duryea Kitchen, '91, 33 

To a Rose, Seymour Ransom, '92, . . . .36 

Noah Webster at Amherst, H. Humphrey Neill, '66 37 

Unlocked, Clyde Fitch, '86 43 

The College Buildings in 1S28, 

Edward Clark Hood, '97, 45 

Senate Politics, Alfred Roelker, Jr., '95, . . 49 

The College Well, Herbert A. Jump, '96, . . 57 

Amherst Fifty Years Ago, William J. Rolfe, '49, . 60 

In Memoriam, Henry Wickes Goodrich, '80, . . 65 

An Amherst Legend, Frederick H. Law, '95, . . 66 

Fair Amherst, Frederick W, Raymond, '99, . . 69 

Amherst Commencements Fifty Years Ago, 

Edward Hitchcock, '49, 71 

On Reading Kennan's Siberian Papers, 

Allen E. Cross, '86, 75 

Memory Song to Amherst, John F. Genung, . . 76 

The Glee, L. C. Stone, '96 78 

Amherst Forty Years Ago, E. G. Cobb, '57, . . 79 

Frazar Augustus Stearns, Seymour Ransom, '92, . 84 

Initiated, Frederick H. Law, '95, . . . .85 



X CONTENTS. 

Old Uncle, Herman Babson, '93, . . , -93 
Poirot, Robert Porter St. John, '93, . . -95 
Inscription on the South Wall of Barrett Gymna- 
sium, ......... 97 

The College in i860, Edward Clark Hood, '97, . 99 
Professor Charlie, Roberts Walker, '96, . . . 102 
Dreams, W. S. Rossiter, '84, . . . . 106 

An Unfinished Story, Charles Amos Andrews, '95. 107 
Amherst Serenade, Tod B. Galloway, '85, . .114 
Sabrina, Charles J. Staples, '96 

and John F. Genung, 117 
The Monument of Right, William L. Corbin, '96, . 125 
Amherst in 1875, Edward Clark Hood, . . . 127 
Julius Hawley Seelye, Talcott Williams, '73, . 131 

Peanut John, Archibald L. Bouton, '96, . . 134 

Her Light Guitar, L C. Stone, '96, .... 138 

The Measure of a Man . 

Worthington C. Holman, '96, 139 
Within Her Kiss, Robert P. St. John, '93, . .151 
Across the River, Frank Edgerton Harkness, . 153 
My Lady, George Breed Zug, '93, .... 157 
Jean Benoit, Herman Babson, '93, .... 158 
The Amherst of To-day, Edward Clark Hood, '97, 171 
In Cap and Gown, George Breed Zug, '93, . . 175 
Song of the Sea Flight, 

Worthington C. Holman, '96, 176 
Misunderstood, Ernest Merrill Bartlett, '94, . 178 
Amherst Good-Bye Song, John F. Genung, . .188 




AN AMHERST BOOK. 



HSIL, SLMA MATER. 

Hail, Alma Mater, old Amherst the true, 

Queen on thy living throne; 
Thine be the homage to wise empire due, 

Thine be our hearts alone, 

Great in the past 

Standest thou fast. 
Thou art worthy; reign, be strong unto the last- 
Hail! 
Hail, Alma Mater, old Amherst the true, 

Thine be our hearts alone. 

John F. Genung. 



ariHERST: TOWN AND COLLEGE. 



What's in a name? Oftentimes a good bit of 
history. The name Amherst, appHed to Town 
and College, was originally given in 1759 ^^ hon- 
or of General Amherst, the hero of Louisbourg. 
He was the commanding officer at that famous 
siege in 1758, when the French stronghold on 
Cape Breton Island was captured by the British 
forces. The student voyager to those northern 
seas may still find in a land-locked harbor the 
ruins of the ancient citadel. They were once a 
mile and a half in extent, and enclosed an area 
of 120 acres. Louisbourg was considered impreg- 
nable. It was the French Gibraltar. After a 
two months' siege, conducted by Generals Am- 
herst and Wolfe, with an army of 11,000 men, 
supported by a great fleet, the fortress was taken 
July 26, 1758. It was a glorious victory. The 
whole northern coast was now dominated by the 
British. Throughout the colonies, men thanked 
God and took courage. England went wild with 
joy. The flags captured at Louisbourg were 
carried in triumph through the streets of London, 
and were placed as trophies in the cathedral of 
St. Paul. In recognition of his distinguished serv- 
ices. General Amherst was made commander-in- 



AMHERST: TOWN AND COLLEGE. 3 

chief of the king's forces in America, and his 
name was honored throughout the EngHsh- 
speaking world. In 1759 he took Ticonderoga 
and Crown Point. The following year he capt- 
ured Montreal and the French army. Thus 
ended the French and Indian war. Amherst 
had won all Canada for Great Britain 

From the beginning of recorded history towns 
have been named after illustrious men. Amherst 
and Amherst College are living monuments to 
the hero of Louisbourg, — the final conqueror of 
Canada. When the inhabitants of East Hadley 
applied to the provincial legislature of Massa- 
chusetts for incorporation as a district, it was 
suggested by Thomas Pownal, the Royal Gov- 
ernor at Boston, that the noble name of Amherst 
be given to the new and enterprising commu- 
nity. In the Acts and Resolves of the Province 
of Massachusetts Bay, (Vol. IV., 173,) under 
the date of February 13, 1759, will be found the 
Act of Incorporation: 

'' Whereas, the inhabitants of the second pre- 
cinct in the town of Hadley, in the County of 
Hampshire, have petitioned this court, setting 
forth sundry difficulties they labour under by 
means of their not being a district, and praying 
they may be so erected; be it therefore enacted 
by the Governor, Council, and House of Rep- 
resentatives : Sect. I. That the said second 
precinct in Hadley, according to its present 
known bounds, be and hereby is erected into a 



4 AAT AMHERST BOOK. 

separate and distinct district by the name of Am- 
herst; and that the inhabitants thereof do the 
duties that are required, and enjoy all privileges 
that towns do, or by law ought to, enjoy in this 
province, that of sending a representative to the 
general assembly only excepted." 

This is a fundamental act in the constitution 
and naming of the town. of Amherst; but there 
is something even more ftmdamental in the or- 
igin of the name and in the planting of the town. 
The name itself is old English. It was first ap- 
plied to a landed estate in the parish of Pembury, 
in the County of Kent. Early forms of the name 
were Hemhurste and Hemmehurst, compound 
words, formed by prefixing the Saxon Hem, 
meaning a border, to the' Saxon Hurst, meaning 
a wood. Amherst, therefore, probably signifies 
the border of a forest, or Edgewood. It may 
possibly be derived from Hamhurst or Home- 
wood. The Amherst family derived its name 
from the situation of its land. Gilbertus de 
Hemmehurst is on record as early as 121 5. The 
family occupied its Amherst estate for over five 
centuries, but now lives at a country seat called 
'' Montreal House," near Seven Oaks, Kent. 
The present owner is Earl Amherst, who signs 
his name simply " Amherst." His father and 
grandfather before him were earls, but the man 
in honor of whom the town of Amherst, Massa- 
chusetts, was named in 1759 was, at that time. 
Major General Jeifery Amherst. 



AMHERST: TOWN AND COLLEGE. 5 

The beginnings of Amherst, Massachusetts, 
may be traced back to the first years of the eight- 
eenth century. The student of Amherst local 
history who wishes to see the earhest monuments 
of this town should notice three historical land- 
marks : 

East and West Streets, those long parallel 
highways which, in 1703, first divided the terri- 
tory called East Hadley into three long divisions, 
extending north and south, and connected by 
Main street, running east and west. This road 
system is the most fundamental fact in the his- 
tory of Amherst. It marked ofif the division in 
which future settlers were to have their allot- 
ments of land. It laid the basis for those beau- 
tiful commons which mark the direction of East 
and West Streets, but which are by no means as 
broad to-day as when originally laid out, forty 
rods wide, in imitation of the West Street of 
Hadley. In the year 1754 the West Street of 
East Hadley was reduced to twenty rods in 
width, and the East Street to twelve rods. 

Next to these highways, the oldest historical 
landmark is the burying-ground on the east side 
of what is now called Pleasant Street. The 
town of Hadley voted January 5, 1730, to set 
apart an acre of ground for a cemetery for the 
"East Inhabitants," who then numbered eight- 
een families. Among them were such familiar 
names as Dickinson, Chauncey, Ingram, Kel- 
logg, Cowles, Hawley, Boltwood, Smith, and 



AMHERST: TOWN AND COLLEGE. 7 

Nash. Probably some of the oldest stone mon- 
uments of the little farming community are still 
above ground in that God's acre, where " the 
rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." Some of 
the inscriptions on those weather-beaten stones, 
just beyond the entrance from Pleasant Street, 
can no longer be deciphered. Any son of Am- 
herst who wishes to know something of its 
founders and pioneers should wander through 
this ancient graveyard where the continuity of 
old family names may be easily followed from 
generation to generation. 

College Hill is the most conspicuous and his- 
torically interesting landmark in the whole town 
of Amherst. The place where the College Ob- 
servatory now stands was once the Moot Hill, 
or meeting place of the original parish, which 
became in 1759 the District, and afterwards, in 
1775, the Town of Amherst. It was on this hill 
that the first parish church was erected, in com- 
pliance with the requirements of Hadley and the 
General Court of Massachusetts. The East In- 
habitants were allowed by provincial law, in 
1734, to become the "Third Precinct" of Had- 
ley on the condition of settHng a '' learned ortho- 
dox minister " and erecting a meeting-house. 
The local records of Amherst begin in 1735. 
The first vote after the election of precinct of- 
ficers was '* to hire a Minester " and " to Build 
a Meating 'House," forty-five by thirty feet in 
dimensions. That little meeting-house, " set up- 



8 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

on the Hill," was really a Temple of Victory for 
local and independent government by the East 
Inhabitants of Hadley. The building served for 
civic as well as religious purposes. The chief 
business of the precinct for many years centred 
on that Moot Hill, where such questions were 
settled as election of town ofhcers, the amount 
of salary and firewood for the minister, the seat- 
ing of families in the meeting-house '' by Estates 
Age & Qualifications," appropriations " for 
scooling," for highways and bridges, for building 
a pound, for hiring persons " to blow ye Kunk 
& sweep ye Meeting House." That conch-shell 
is still kept by Dr. Hitchcock on College Hill, 
where the sound of horns or bells has called to- 
gether the men of Amherst for many genera- 
tions. 

The founding of Amherst College is insepar- 
ably connected with that old meeting place 
where two parish churches were successively 
built. It was the religious spirit fostered there 
which gave rise to Amherst Academy and to 
those generous subscriptions of money, labor, 
and materials which made the building of South 
College possible. Colonel Elijah Dickinson, n 
townsman, gave the original six acres of land 
for the site of Amherst Collegiate Institute. For 
many years the " meeting-house " on the Hill 
was the place where morning and evening pray- 
ers, Sunday services, and pubHc exercises were 
attended by college students. Among the ar- 



AMHERST: TOWN AND COLLEGE. 9 

guments of the trustees of Amherst Academy 
for the establishment of a central college in Am- 
herst were the following: 

(i) " The hill in the centre of the west road 
in Amherst on which the Church stands " is with- 
in about two miles of the geographical centre 
of the counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Hamp- 
den, Franklin, and Worcester. 

(2) The hill is equally central between the 
limits of the commonwealth on the north and 
south. 

(3) It is almost equally distant from the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge, the College in Providence, 
and the College in New Haven. In each case 
the distance is about eighty-five miles. 

(4) As a College site the hill is further recom- 
mended for its elevation, salubrity, and beauty. 
It comprehends " thirty towns in three counties 
within a single view, from twenty-seven of which 
it is said that the church in the first parish in 
Amherst may be seen." 

The founders of Town and College had vision, 
without which the people perish. College Hill, 
the natural acropolis of Amherst, has been a de- 
termining constitutional factor in the history of 
this academic village. That Moot-Hill, where 
the Observatory still stands, was the original seat 
of town and parish life. The village grew 
along the hillsides. The meeting-house was for 
the Puritan townsmen of East Hadley, or Am- 
herst, what hill forts, citadels, castles, temples, 



lo AA^ AMHERST BOOK. 

or churches were for the city builders of the 
ancient and mediaeval world. Sightliness, 
health, and beauty of situation characterized the 
towns of ancient Palestine, Greece, and Italy. 
" A city set on a hill cannot be hid." The little 
parish church of East Hadley, 45x30 feet square, 
was the institutional cornerstone of Amherst 
schools, Amherst Academy, and Amherst Col- 
lege. 

Although new parishes rose to the east, to 
the north, and to the south of College Hill, and 
one by one seceded from the mother church; al- 
though for a time town meetings were held in the 
old meeting-house on East Street Common; and 
although the first postofifice was m that section 
of the town, nevertheless the College finally re- 
stored the lost balance of power to the village 
and determined the future development and 
prosperity of Amherst. It is still a hill town, 
overlooking beautiful valleys on every side, but 
it is not as other hill towns in this part of Mas- 
sachusetts. Amherst is, and always will be, a 
college town. Its towers will be seen from 
afar by ambitious youth in adjoining counties. 
Like the acropoHs of Athens, Amherst is 
crowned by a Parthenon. 

Old Amherst still resembles the original Sax- 
on Hcmhurst or Edgewood. The forest still 
fringes the northern and eastern borders, like a 
primitive Germanic Mark. And yet, by the en- 
terprise of townsmen, the village community of 



AMHERST: TOWN AND COLLEGE. ir 

Amherst is well connected with the outside 
world. It was an opening day for Amherst 
when, in 1767, the enterprising Simeon Nash be- 
gan to drive his freight wagon to Boston and 
back, once a week, by the old Bay Path. It was 
a greater triumph of enterprise when the treas- 
urer of Amherst College, Squire Dickinson, by 
his indomitable will power, dragged up toward 
College Hill and his own residence the Amherst 
and Belchertown Railway, built by the aid of 
Amherst capital. But the greatest of all open- 
ings from our hill-top to the sea was made in 
1888 by the Central Massachusetts Railroad. 

The near view from College Hill, across those 
iron ways of modern travel, is more lovely than 
ever; but the vision of Amherst men has widened 
since that Collegiate Institute was founded. New 
missions and new ministries are opening on 
every side for her alumni. Her sons are in con- 
gress and in many branches of the pubHc service;, 
in church, state, and university; on the press^ 
the stage, and platform ; in various arts and kinds 
of business. All fields of honest labor, from 
those of the Puritan farmers, who founded the 
College on this upland pasture, to those of the 
ministerial reformer, the busy editor, the lawyer, 
the doctor, the teacher, and the social worker in 
our great cities, are seen to be equally honorable 
and divine. Every man's true work in this 
vv-orld is inspired like that of the plowman men- 
tioned in Isaiah (28:24-29); " For his God doth 



12 



AN AMHERST BCOK. 



instruct him aright, and doth teach him, . . This 
also Cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which 
is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wis- 
dom." For the opened eyes and for the larger 
vision let Young Amherst be grateful to Old 
Amherst. Everywhere her children rise up and 
call her blessed Alma Mater. 

" Give her of the fruit of her hands; 
And let her works praise her in the gates." 

Herbert B. Adams, '72. 



ON PCLHan HILLS. 

On Pelham Hills some tinted ray 
Now rests awhile, then fades away 
In shifting blue or purple glow, 
Whose changing shadows seem to show 
The brilliant splendor of the day. 

Not always decked in glad array, 
Ofttimes a garb of sombre gray 

Is Nature's pleasure to bestow 
On Pelham Hills. 

Kind, sympathizing friends are they, 
Who feel our changing moods — now gav, 
Or now in sadness bathed; and so 
When joys and sorrows come or go, 
We read sweet Nature's sympathy 
On Pelham Hills. 

Le Roy Phillips, '92. 




- s 







THE riRST MILESTONE. 

Pi 

He was only fifteen when the young lawyer 
began calling on his sister. She had just passed 
nineteen, but the four years difference in their 
ages had never seemed so great as it did now. 
He could remember, clear back to the time when 
he was four, how he had looked up to that sister 
and considered her judgment infallible, and every 
year since then had but emphasized those early 
impressions. She was the eldest of the family, 
and every little grievance had been carried to her. 
She had been the uncrowned queen of the house- 
hold since that day when she had started bravely 
forth to the public school, and had come back 
with wonderful stories of that strange world, 
which still seemed at such a distance from the 
rest of them. And her sway had not been less 
potent because she had always carefully con- 
cealed her sceptre and had made no show of the 
unlimited power which the one small hand con- 
tained. When, in a fit of passion, he had 
clenched his fist and struck his little sister, the 
deep feeling of shame that had come over him 
when that older sister turned scornfully from 
him and called him a coward, still brought the 
hot blushes to his temples. And when he and 
his brother had quarrelled, and his brother came 
in from the street with his head all bleeding from 



7'HE FIRST MILESTONE. 15 

the stone which his murderous hand had thrown, 
he had envied that brother — yes, envied liim, 
even with the ugly gash across his white fore- 
head, when she was kissing away the tears and 
sorrowfully binding up the wound. 

When he had grown older it was his sister 
who had stirred his ambition and excited his 
dreams. He had studied for her sake, that she 
might be proud of him. He remembered how, 
during a certain stage in his career, he had given 
up his desire to be a fireman or a street-car con- 
ductor, when she told him of hig-her things and 
pointed out nobler deeds. From her lips he 
could believe that there were occupations even 
more honorable than standing on top of a burn- 
ing building directing a great stream of water, 
while thousands of envious boys crowded the 
street below and cheered his bright uniform. 
Thus, little by little, she had shaped his char- 
acter. 

When she had gone away to school he had 
broken the one inflexible rule of his young life 
and had written letters to her. He remembered 
how he copied the first one several times, until 
the great improvement he had made in writing 
during the few days she had been away could 
not fail to impress her. When the weekly notes 
came from her he had read them with delight, 
and had tried to analyze their charm. They didn't 
seem to be in just the proper form. They were 
dififerent from the ones in the Standard Letter 



1 6 AjV AMHERST BOOK. 

Writer, which he had studied so carefully and 
tried to copy. His sister always seemed to talk 
on paper rather than write a real letter. Then he 
remembered how, when it came time for vacation, 
he had always gone to the station to meet her. 
He recalled especially that vacation when he had 
stood by her side and found that his eyes came 
higher than hers, and she had looked up into 
them and dubbed him her young knight. 

But somehow all these things seemed a little 
different after the young lawyer began to call. 
And he liked the young lawyer, too. He was the 
first real live college man who had ever come 
distinctly within his narrow horizon, and in those 
days, when he was dreaming of college life, he 
v/as eager to welcome and admire anyone who 
had come fresh from that foreign country. He 
used to watch the young lawyer carefully, and he 
tried to imitate him. He tried to get into the 
habit of biting his lips thoughtfully when a hard 
question was asked him, and he tried to look 
grave and knit his brow and choose his words 
carefully when he wanted to impress his play- 
mates. Then the young lawyer had a way of 
carrying things with a rush that pleased the boy. 
He Hked eager, impulsive, fearless men, and the 
young lawyer had such pronounced views, and 
expressed them so boldly, that from the first the 
boy was his staunch adherent. But much as he 
liked and admired the newcomer, he always 
looked upon him as a sort of interloper. 



THE FIRST MILESTONE. 17 

Finally, one winter evening-, when the boy — 
all flushed with violent exercise — had rushed 
noisily into the house, he read, or thought he 
read, on his sister's face a different story than 
he had ever seen there before.. She came for- 
ward to meet him with a joyous light in her 
eyes, her face all covered with pretty laughing 
blushes. Then she timidly held out to him the 
back of her left hand, half concealing it with the 
other, as though hesitating to disclose her se- 
cret; but the boy's quick eye caught the sparkle 
of the diamond. He never forgot that picture. 
Even he was old enough to see that his sister 
had changed from girlhood into womanhood, 
and the solemn thought suddenly came to him 
that if his sister was a woman, he was a man. 
The thought had never come to him with such 
force before. Manhood had always seemed a 
great, vague, indefinite field, which would not 
be reached for years. He had never dreaded its 
coming. He had always looked forward to 
meeting the world on equal terms and manfully 
o offering it battle. Now, for the first time, he 
had caught sight of the foe. Childhood was 
passed. His sister had become a woman, and 
that single step of hers had carried him forward 
into a new region. 

Now this boy was not what is usually known 
as a home boy. He was not extraordinarily 
imaginative. On the contrary, his friends had 
always called him practical and prosaic. So he 



i8 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

didn't do anything that might seem foolish on 
this occasion. He laughingly kissed the blush- 
ing face of his sister and examined the diamond 
ring with critical care. Then he exhausted his 
small vocabulary in extravagant praise of the 
young lawyer. But that night, before he went 
to sleep, his head tossed uneasily on his pillow, 
for the first seed of unrest had been planted in 
his soul, and the first burning desire for mighty 
deeds of emprise had seized upon his mind. 

The boy grew into a young man. He went 
away to college, and along with many other 
changing views he learned that his sister was 
no less an aid and an inspiration to him because 
she was pointing out to another man the path 
to success. He went out into the world. He 
met the enemy for whom he had longed, and to 
his great surprise, the lance, which had seemed 
so well tempered, had broken mto pieces against 
the rounded shield of his foe. He dragged his 
battered armor to his sister's feet, and the wealth 
of affection which she was then bestowing upon 
her children had only increased her loyalty to 
her first subject. The hurrying years mended 
his old wounds and brought new ones in their 
place, but through them all he carried the re- 
membrance of that first experience. He grew 
to love another girl, the only girl who had ever 
reminded him of his sister. He read in her 
eyes that story, which came to him like a dream 
of the past, and he was happy. 



THE TRUE ALUMNUS. . 19 

He passed on into full manhood. He founded 
a happy home, and in the soft glow of his fire- 
side he forgot the wild dreams of fame that had 
once been his. The day came when, even 
through his glasses and tear-dimmed eyes, he 
read the same story; this time on the face of his 
daughter; and again it came to him like a vision 
of the past. The story never grew old to the 
man. Every time he read it he loved it; but at 
no time did it make so deep an impression upon 
% his character as it did at that first milestone. 

DwiGHT W. Morrow, '95. 



THE TRUE ALUMNUS. 

Loyal to his Alma Mater, 

Prized in friendship's length'ning chain, 
Let him to the reef of wisdom 

Add at least one coraled grain. 

William L. Corbin, '96. 



AMHERST COLLEGE IN lo2L 

A person acquainted with the Amherst of to- 
day will see just one familiar feature in the 
cut on the opposite page — the unmistakable 
outlines of one of the College dormitories. All 
the rest the finger of time, together with the . 
more impatient hand of man, has changed be- 
yond recognition. The church on the crest of 
the hill is the old First Congregational Meeting- 
house, which stood from 1788 until 1828 upon 
the spot where the Observatory is now located. 
The building on the left is old South College,, 
the first edifice of the Amherst Collegiate Insti- 
tution. 

Just here a few words in reference to the early 
history of the college will be in place, for one 
cannot understand the story of these first col- 
lege buildings without knowing something of 
the circumstances under which they were ac- 
quired. Throughout the opening years of the 
century there was a growing need of a college 
in the central part of Massachusetts. Everybody 
felt it, the churches most of all, and now and 
then they said so in their assemblies. Accord- 
ingly, when the trustees of Amherst Academy, 
encouraged by the remarkable success of that 
institution, determined in 1818 to start on the 



22 



AN AMHERST BOOK 



larger venture of a collegiate institution, they 
had with them not only the goodwill, but the en- 
thusiasm and active support of the counties of 
Central Massachusetts. But this did not mean 
unlimited wealth for the College, for the people 
at that time were poor, and what they were able 
to do in a benevolent way was claimed b}^ the 
home churches. It is interesting to know 
that the council representing the churches of 
this part of the state, which met in September, 
1818, to hear the plans of the trustees, came 
very near locating the College in Northampton. 
But the eloquent arguments of two loyal citizens 
of Amherst turned the vote, and Northampton 
was left for another institution of learning. 

After the plans for the starting of the College 
had been matured, the trustees were compelled 
to wait nearly two years, until the question of 
removing Williams College — at that time suffer- 
ing greatly from its isolated situation — to some 
central part of the state could be settled. As 
soon as the State Legislature decided that Wil- 
liams College should remain in Williamstown, 
the trustees of Amherst Academy took immedi- 
ate steps towards the erection of a suitable build- 
ing for the new collegiate institution. They 
secured ten acres of land on the hill w^here the 
parish meeting-house stood, and proceeded to 
break the ground for a building thirty feet wide, 
one hundred feet long, and four stories high. 

The town of Amherst will never again work 



AMHERST COLLEGE IN 1821. 23 

itself up to such a pitch of excitement as it 
reached over the erection of this first college 
building. The people gave all the money they 
could spare, and then donated material, labor, 
teams, and provisions for the workmen. The 
( cornerstone was laid August 9, 1820. Dr. Noah 
' Webster, then celebrated for his famous spelling- 
book, and who was one of the most energetic of 
the founders of Amherst College, delivered the 
oration. Before September 18, 1821, the day set 
for the inauguration of President Moore, and for 
the dedication of the first building, the structure 
was not only complete, but about half its rooms 
were furnished, ready for occupation by the stu- 
dents. The building was constructed on a sim- 
ple plan, but an excellent one for its purpose. 
A transverse partition through the middle divides 
it into two " entries," between which there is no 
communication, except through the loft. The 
rooms were originally large and square, and each 
was intended to be used as study and bedroom 
for two students. Not until twenty-five years 
later were bedrooms partitioned of¥ from some of 
1 the studies. 

The lithograph gives a good idea, in the main, 
of the appearance of the college grounds at that 
time. It is correct in showing the old church on 
higher ground than the dormitory; the knoll was 
graded some ten years later to its present level. 
But the idea it gives should be modified in some 
of the details. The hill upon which the two 



24 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

buildings stood was more of an eminence than 
appears in the picture, and the five trees repre- 
sented are more artistic than true to fact, for the 
grounds were in their original rude state, and 
destitute of anything like trees or shrubs. In the 
rear of the college grounds the primeval forest 
began and stretched away, unbroken, to the east- 
ward over the Pelham hills. The main highway 
ran along the brow of the hill, some distance in 
front of the buildings. About a hundred feet to 
the northeast of the dormitory was dug the fa- 
mous College well. 

During the first year and a half of its exist- 
ence the whole College lived and recited in the 
one building, though morning and evening pray- 
ers were held in the church ; and there, occupying 
the seats in the gallery, the students worshipped 
on Sunday with the townspeople. 

If the rooms in the old dormitory could only 
speak, what stories they would have to tell! Take 
number thirty, for example, known later by the 
rhythmical name of " South College, South En- 
try, Fourth Story, Front Corner," — or '' Ultima 
Thulc," for short. There the first Senior class 
studied and slept and recited, but was not crowd- 
ed, for at that time the Senior class consisted 
of Messrs. Field and Snell. There the Psi Upsi- 
lon fraternity used to hold its meetings, and 
there was the centre of the famous squirt-gun 
riot. The Sophomore class of '6i had laid out 
in state " S. Gunn, ex-member of the class of 



A QUATRAIN. 25 

'60," in this room, preparatory to a formal burial 
in token of cessation of hostilities with the Fresh- 
men. It happened that S. Gunn had been stolen 
from the Juniors, and they naturally objected to 
the cool appropriation of their property. Ac- 
cordingly, while the Sophomores were at dinner, 
the Juniors marched up in a body and besieged 
the room. Before many minutes the Sopho- 
mores learned of the invasion and came running 
tip the stairs. Then followed a battle royal. The 
Juniors demolished the garret stairs and used the 
pieces to pound the Sophomores' heads. They 
i broke through the ceiling of the room, and 
through the double doors, but a pistol in the 
hands of the Soph who stood guard inside per- 
suaded them not to enter. Just as the Sopho- 
mores were getting the upper hand the President 
appeared upon the field, and the settlement of the 
matter was completed by arbitration. That after- 
noon the Sophomores buried S. Gunn with elab- 
orate ceremony. 

Edward Clark Hood, '97. 



A QUSTRSIN. 

I'd rather lose and break my heart, 
Than keep it whole forever, 

And live my life from you apart. 
And see, and know you, never. 

Clyde Fitch, '86. 



A DISCOVERY. 

One morning, while rummaging about among- 
the stacks of old newspapers which abound on 
the lower floor of the library building, I hap- 
pened upon a copy of the Pelham Herald, bear- 
ing date Fe1). 29, 1827. As this was the issue of 
the day following the dedication of the old chapel 
—then known as the Johnson Chapel — it con- 
tained a detailed account of the dedicatory exer- 
cises, together with a description of tlie building. 
The latter I copied. It ran as follows: 

" To the Amherst College student there is no 
elevation so grand as the summit of College Hill, 
and the erection of the Johnson Chapel upon this 
spot marks the culminating point in the history 
of the College. The building, with the excep- 
tion of a square tower over the entrance, is an 
exact reproduction of the Athenian Parthenon, 
and those who have seen the two say that a sim- 
ilar tower w^ould have also added much to the 
grandeur of the latter. Mounting high above the 
cluster of smaller buildings, it can be seen for 
m.iles around, and charms the observer with its 
fine architectural proportions. A tower above 
an entrance certainly gives prominence and im- 
pressiveness, and makes a fitting approach to a 
great l)uilding. The Parthenon was built in the 



28 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

best period of Greek architecture, and under the 
inspiration of the greatest genius in art — Phidias. 
It is fortunate that the students will have so fine 
a model of his great work constantly before their 
eyes, and it must needs give them great inspira- 
tion in the study of Greek art. The observer of 
the Johnson Chapel gains a conception of the 
purity and exquisite grace of ancient art that 
can be obtained nowhere else in America. The 
broad steps, massive Doric pillars, surmounted 
by proportionate capitals, the frieze, and the 
severity of geometrical forms, take us back to 
the age of Pericles, and College Hill becomes 
the Athenian Acropolis. As simplicity and 
grandeur, boldness and originality in design 
made the Parthenon the pride of Athens, so the 
Johnson Chapel will ever be a wonder, a pride, 
and a glory to Amherst College." 

As I was copying these last lines the recita- 
tion-bell rang in the tower which would have 
been such an addition to the Parthenon; and 1 
hastened to attend class beneath its " prominence 
and impressiveness." 

Le Roy Phillips, '92. 




AMHERST IN 1524. 

The infant Colleg-e grew rapidly, as infants 
will, and soon became altogether too large to be 
contained in the single building. Accordingly, 
in the fall of 1822, another dormitory was 
erected, and was ready for use by the opening 
of the winter term in 1823. It was uniform in 
size and plan with the other, except that the 
fourth floor of the south entry was reserved for 
public uses, the space now occupied by the two 
corner rooms and hall being left without par- 
tition and used as chapel and lecture-room. The 
two inner rooms were used, one for the College 
library, and the other as a cabinet for chemical 
apparatus. 

It was in this hall in the upper part of the old 
dormitory that the famous goose episode oc- 
curred. Just before morning prayers some 
waggish student had tied a goose in the Presi- 
dent's chair. The President stood up during 
the exercise that morning, but otherwise no 
notice was taken of the intruder. During the 
day, however, the more decorous of the students 
worked up considerable feeling over the matter 
and proposed to hold an indignation meeting of 
the College. At prayers that evening President 
Humphrey found it necessary to make some 
reference to the matter. He both relieved those 
students who were indignant, and got more than 



AMHERST IN 1824. 31 

even with the perpetrator of the deed by saying, 
in a perfectly unimpassioned manner: '' Gen- 
tlemen, the trustees have intended to provide 
competent instructors in all the departments, so 
as to meet the capacity of every student. But 
it seems that one student was overlooked, and I 
am sure they will be glad to learn that he has 
promptly supplied the deficiency by choosing a 
goose for his tutor. Par nobile fratrinny The 
humor may seem just a little heavy at this dis- 
tance, but at that time it came in perfectly pat, 
and the students went down the stairs laughing 
and shouting: " Who is brother to the goose? " 
There is another feature in the lithograph of 
1824 that must not be overlooked — the old bell- 
tower. The College had been regularly waked 
up and called to prayers by the bell in the steeple 
of the meeting-house, tmtil some benevolent per- 
son considerately donated a bell to the College, 
doubtless thinking that if the College only had a 
bell it would straightway build a chapel to go 
with it. The College did the best it could at the 
time, and set up a rude tower at the north end 
of North College. There the new bell wagged 
its deafening iron tongue for about a year, tmtil 
the students — either because of the unsightliness 
of the tower, or because the brazen mouth of the 
bell was altogether too near their bedroom win- 
dows — assembled one pleasant evening, and 
playfully tipped the whole thing over. 

Edward Clark Hood, '97. 



OLD AMHERST. 

Old Amherst! thy sons, wherever they roam, 

All imite in their words of thy praise; 
Our pride thou hast been through the years that 
are ^one, 

Thy glories, thy honors we'll raise. 
Thy sons are all true, they are loyal to thee; 

All are one when thy honor's at stake. 
Thou art dearer to us than our words can ex- 
press; 

We ever will toil for thy sake. 

From the North, from the South, from the East, 
from the West, 
The hearts of thy sons turn to thee; 
We dream of thy precepts, we trust in thy 
strength. 
Thy glory before us we see. 
Our breasts throb with joy when we think of 
thy halls, 
Our eyes dim with thoughts of the past; 
And mem'ries come thronging of days that are 
gone, 
That in fancy forever shall last= 

Then here's to thy future! Thy past is secure; 

Thy glories, thy triumphs are ours; 
Thy honor, thy name, thy position, thy fame, 

Will increase by the use of our powers. 
May thy sons be a glory, an honor, a strength! 

May success crown our tasks and bring cheer! 
May thy teachings illumine the paths of our 
lives. 

Alma Mater! Old Amherst, so dear! 

Frank D. Blodgett, '93. 



DECCITrUL aPPEARAMCES. 

It was the day after the Prom., and I found 
myself inclined to devote an hour or so to the 
charms of Morpheus. Spurning the hospitahty 
of my old friend — the window-seat — and ridding 
myself of certain outer garments, I retired to the 
inner sanctum, where I was soon sleeping a 
sweet sleep, with an accompaniment of dreams, 
in which were mingled most tunefully the strains 
of a waltz and visions of a decidedly pretty face. 

After an indefinite period of this enjoyment I 
started up with the dim consciousness of voices 
in our study, and also the murmur of animated 
conversation in Ned's room adjoining. I could 
distinguish Dick's musical tones — remarkably 
subdued in this case — and I was about to hallo 
lazily to him for the time of day, but finally 
found courage enough to get up and pull aside 
the portierre. I pulled it back with considerable 
haste. Dick was snugly ensconced in the win- 
dow-seat, with the curtain carelessly drawn, and 

a girl! I peeked cautiously out. No, they 

hadn't seen me. I manfully blessed the Hebe 
who had seen fit to clear up the study, and as 
quickly poured forth malediction on her head 
for putting my things away carefully in my study 
closet, as far beyond my reach as if they were 



34 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

in the next house. And to crown all, I remem- 
bered that the key which milocked the second 
exit from my bedroom was lost. A pretty state 
of things, truly! 

Just then Dick's voice began to rise, and be- 
fore I knew it his lips uttered words that I could 
not fail to hear and appreciate, though at the 
same tirne I was mightily shocked at their im- 
port. 

" And now," he began, " now that we are 
alone, may I say something to you — something 
that I have been longing to say, but for which 
tim.e and courag^e have hitherto been wanting. 
May — may I speak?" 

" Yes," came the almost inaudible reply; the 
while I raged inwardly at being obliged to listen, 
and cursed Dick for having chosen such an in- 
opportune occasion, and reviled his disregard 
for the proprieties. 

" I scarcely know how to express my 
thoughts," Dick continued, his voice strained 
with emotion. "' But you cannot have misun- 
derstood my intentions, Miss Agnes — I love 

you!" The young rascal was making a pro- 
posal for marriage. 

''This is all so sudden! — I had no idea of 
such a thing! I never thought," — the reply 
came, in tremulous tones. 

" But you do now — you love me — ah, how 
happy we shall be ! " There was a delighted 
little laugh. I entertained a wild thought of 



DECEITFUL APPEARANCES. 35 

enveloping myself in my bathrobe and fleeing, 
when the talking in Ned's room suddenly grew 
[ouder, and presently sounded in the hall. The 
window-seat heard it, too. 

" Hush," said Dick, " they are coming! Don'i 
breathe a word of this — they will know all about 
it soon enough! " The words were scarcely said 
before the rest crowded in, four of them — I 
could tell by their voices — all buzzmg like a 
swarm of bees. 

"Where have you been all the while?" asked 
one. 

" We thought you were lost! " chimed in an- 
other. 

" It was highly improper, especially for you! " 
added a third, reprovingly, with a glance at the 
window-seat. I mentally seconded this senti- 
ment. Then followed the usual list of pleasant 
things said about the room, and they departed, 
Dick excusing himself and promising to be at 
the train. 

They were scarcely gone when I stuck my 
head between the curtains. 

" Dick," I said, " you're a villain! " 

"Hello!" he repHed, coolly. "Have you just 
waked up?" 

" No trifling! " I said, sternly. " What do you 
mean by violating the Platonic sacredness of our 
window-seat by offering yourself in marriage?" 

" What! " he exclaimed, and threw himself on 
the cushions. I thought he was going to have 



36 AA^ AMHERST BOOK. 

a fit. Finally he gasped out between the con- 
vulsions: "Oh! — pity you're a Senior! — next 
year's Olio ! — Oh 1 " At last he came to himself 
to explain. 

" Merely the chaperon of Ned's party, my dear 
boy, rehearsing my part in the Senior dramatics 
with me, that's all," and he turned over the 
prompt-book. I read the love scene, line for 
line. 

But if Dick does as well as that at Commence- 
ment — well, he ought to take to the stage. 

John C. Duryea Kitchen, '91. 



TO A ROSE. 

Found on the lapel of aii old dress coat. 

Crimson-colored, fresh and fragrant were thy 

leaves long years ago. 
When a maiden lightly whispered that the little 

Jacqueminot 
Held within its ruby petals all the love-warmth 

of her heart. 
While I gently kissed her temple, saying sadly,, 

" We must part." 

^ ^ jjj ;!< ijC ^ ;j; ^ ;{i ;)?- 

Now thy lone leaves, brown and crumpled, faint- 

ly-odored, faded lie. 
Breathing softly, '' List thou, lover! Love is 

rose-like. It must die ! " 

Seymour Ransom, '92. 



NOAH WEBSTER WV AMHERST. 

When Amherst College remodelled and en- 
larged her library building, like a wise mother, 
she had respect to the future. The book-stack 
was made large enough for years to come, and 
the two upper stories are still devoted to miscel- 
laneous uses. The white walls, enclosing the 
white and empty shelves, made more staring and 
ghastly by the light that streams over them from 
the uncurtained skylight, all make a sort of se- 
pulchre in which are entombed old portraits of 
the faculty, old pictures of the town and of the 
college buildings, and other similar lumber 
which just escapes being rubbish because of the 
memories that hang about the motley collection. 

Among these objects of forgotten worth is the 
bust of Noah Webster, which is represented on 
the following page. There could hardly be any- 
thing more typical of the sad obscurity that 
seems to have shrouded the memory of Noah 
Webster's life in Amherst. Few of the students 
in the College know that he ever lived in the vil- 
lage at all. Many of the townsfolk are unaware 
that he was once one of Amherst's most loyal 
and active citizens. His personality seems to 
have been lost in the expanse of the Dictionary, 
and the changes and revisions of the book have 




BUST OF NOAH WEBSTER. 



NOAH WEBSTER AT AMHERST. 39 

blurred the fame of the first American lexicog- 
rapher. Mr. Scudder s interesting- " Life of Noah 
Webster" was published in 1883, but according 
to the record of the College librarian, I was the 
first one to call for the book, and even this call 
is dated April, 1896, thirteen years after the 
biography was printed. 

Still, the book called " Webster's Dictionary " 
perpetuates in a general and somewhat indefinite 
way the fame of its first author, and Amherst is 
proud of the fact that tnis famous scholar has 
intimate relation to the village and to the College. 
He came here in 181 2, nine years before the Col- 
lege was founded, bought a house with several 
acres of land about it, and settled down to com- 
plete his great book. His house stood where Kel- 
logg's Block is now situated, and there were no 
houses east of that in the same neighborhood. He 
planted a large apple orchard immediately about 
his dwelling, and the land beyond remained as 
meadow. Some of the trees which he planted 
are still standing back of Mr. E. F. Cook's house, 
and the scythe still cuts its swath over the fields 
which he mowed. 

He came to Amherst from New Haven, where 
he had spent six years in such devoted labor on 
the Dictionary that his purse had run low in 
proportion to the height of his enthusiasm. He 
was nominally a lawyer, but the law had been 
neglected. Dr. Trumbull of Hartford, speaking 
of this neglect, said: " I fear he will breakfast 



40 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

Upon Institutes, dine upon Dissertations, and 
go supperless to bed." He had one source of 
support, so far as it went. His Spelling Book, 
then of great reputation, and soon after of na- 
tional renown, yielded him half a cent a copy, 
and was in so great demand as to produce a 
small income. He came to Amherst because he 
found the village to be of such primitive manners 
and refined society as suited his means and his 
tastes. As a writer says in the Amherst Rec- 
ord of September 24, 1879. '' On the profits of 
the Spelling Book he supported the family in 
the orchard while he made the Dictionary and 
planned for the foundation of Amherst College. 
But before all this he had married a pretty wife, 
and this beautiful wife and his attractive daugh- 
ters took the lead in the refined society of the 
town. He mowed the little hay crop of his 
grounds and his daughters raked the hay and 
afterwards married the most elegant scholars of 
the country." For ten years he thus lived and 
worked in Amherst; then leaving his family in 
New Haven, he went to Europe, and in Cam- 
bridge, England, wrote the last word of his book, 
in 1825. His life's work was done, and in a let- 
ter to Dr. Miner he says : " When I arrived at 
the last word I was seized with a tremor that 
made it difficult to proceed. I, however, sum- 
moned up strength to finish the work, and then, 
walking about the room, I soon recovered." 
On his return home he published at his own 



I 



NOAH WEBSTER AT AMHERST. 41 

expense, in 1828, the first quarto edition, which 
was sold by subscription. In 1840-41 he pub- 
Hshed a second edition, which contained revis- 
ions and corrections. Three thousand copies 
were printed, and at the time of his death fifteen 
hundred were still unsold. After his death, in 
1843, Messrs. J. S. & C. Adams, publishers and 
booksellers in Amherst, bought the remaining 
copies and the right to publish during the re- 
mainder of the unexpired copyright period. 
They printed no more, and soon sold all their 
interest to G. & C. Merriam, the predecessors of 
the present G. & C. Merriam Company. In more 
than one way, therefore, Amherst was related to 
the Dictionary, and in her beauty, quiet, refine- 
ment and simplicity was the fit environment for 
the scholar and his book. 

But Noah Webster was more than a secluded 
resident of the town. He was unusually alive 
to all the interests of the village, prominent in 
her public life, in the care of her educational in- 
stitutions, and in personal labor for the church. 
He was one of the trustees of the Amherst Acad- 
emy, and was foremost in influence as well as in 
earnestness in establishing Amherst College on 
the foundation of the old Academy. Indeed, 
among all those who labored for the foundation 
of our Alma Mater, there was probably at that 
time no one so widely known as Noah Webster, 
through his philological writing and extensive 
lecturing. Indeed, the others were comparative- 



42- AN AMHERST BOOK. 

ly unknown, so the writer already quoted is not 
far from right when he says: "It is probable 
that if that great dictionary had not been made 
in Amherst, the College would never have been 
built." With nice appropriateness, therefore, 
Noah Webster gave one of the two addresses at 
the laying of the cornerstone of the first college 
building. 

Let us, therefore, brush the dust from off the 
almost forgotten bust while we proudly remem- 
ber that Amherst village and Amherst College 
are intimately associated with the memory and 
renown of the first great American lexicograph- 
er. 

H. Humphrey Neill, '66. 




UNLOCKED. 

I could not speak what yet I often wished to say ; 

A pretty compHment I'd think, but — puff, away 

It flew on wings, before I gave it breath, the 
while 

Another's graceful words had won the longed- 
for smile. 

Then lo, a miracle — no warning, forth there 
rushed 

All that I e'er had thought of grace, and lips had 
hushed. 

Devotion, adoration, nothing left to seek, 

At last love opened wide my lips and let me 
speak. 

Clyde Fitch, '86. 





7^ M 



^ o 
O 



THE COLLEGE BUILDINGS IN 1525. 

" And now the old Chapel, built when the 
College was struggling for its charter, and em- 
bodying something of the idea — just behold it 
from its western front — meekly looking up, 
bravely looking out, patiently waiting for what- 
ever may betide, there it stands between those 
two old domitories like Moses between Aaron 
and Hur, the day that he fought the Amale- 
kites." President Stearns in his address of wel- 
come at the fiftieth anniversary has described 
the old Chapel very happily, and very much as it 
must always appear to Amherst men. The pic- 
ture fails to give it quite the right expression, 
for it stands guard with a good deal of dignity, 
as if conscious of a grave responsibility. It 
seems to have a dim suspicion, too, that it is all 
out of style, but it is rather proud of the fact 
than otherwise. 

Like all the earlier buildings of the College, 
the Chapel was erected because such a building 
became absolutely indispensable. The hall in 
the fourth story of North College was hopelessly 
inadequate as a chapel, and the College was suf- 
fering for lack of recitation rooms. In view of 
the financial condition of the institution, the 
legacy of Adam Johnson, of Pelham, came like 



46 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

a gcdsend; for though it covered only a part of 
the expense of the building, it warranted the 
trustees in attempting to raise enough to com- 
plete the work. 

The original arrangement of rooms was very 
much as it is at present. On the first fioor were 
recitation rooms for Greek and Latin, and two 
for mathematics. On the second floor, besides 
the chapel proper, were the theological and 
rhetorical rooms, since thrown together to form 
the small chapel. The room on the third floor 
was used for the College library, which was 
moved over from its former place in North Col- 
lege, and for the libraries of the Alexandrian 
and Athenian Societies. 

Iw the early days morning prayers were held 
at daybreak. To the tune of the relentless Chapel 
bell the poor fellows used to turn out in the cold, 
gray dawn of a winter's morning — how reluctant- 
ly, we who hate to get up at eight o'clock can 
well imagine — and rush up those Chapel stairs 
" half dressed and less than half awake," just as 
the three sharp clangs announced that the last 
minute of grace had expired. After chapel they 
would lag, still breakfastless, to the first recita- 
tion, with an appetite, we surmise, for something 
besides learning. 

It must have been this mode of life that made 
the students play such unaccountable pranks. 
For instance, by way of doing something orig- 
inal, or else merely for the sake of a little diver- 



THE COLLEGE BULLDINGS LN 1828. 47 

sion, a number of students from one of the 
classes in the thirties lugged a calf up to the top 
of the Chapel tower, left him to enjoy the view, 
and went to morning prayers. The calf soon 
wearied of the landscape, and began in his vig- 
orous bovine way to proclaim the fact to the 
neighborhood. To make the story short, the 
College janitor and two assistants spent a good 
part of the morning in getting the beast down. 

The view from the Chapel tower is one of the 
rare perquisites of the student at Amherst. The 
green Connecticut valley stretches out like a 
great garden in every direction from the foot of 
College Hill — itself a garden — and is hedged in 
on the four sides by those great hills that are so 
essential a part of Amherst, and seem to be the 
special property of Amherst College. The hills 
are jagged and picturesque on the south; round 
and rolling on the east; on the north, tall and 
majestic; and the Hampshire hills across the 
broad valley, with the faint blue Berkshires be- 
hind them, seem to mark the western boundary 
of the world. 

Old North College — old in distinction from 
the present North College, which was known as 
Middle College while Old North was standing — 
was completed in the winter of 1828. It was 
pleasanter and more convenient than the others, 
except the rooms on the north side, where the 
sun never came. The erection of this building 
started the movement for grading the College 



48 



AJV AMHERST BOOK. 



grounds. In the poverty of the College the stu- 
dents took hold of this work with a will, as op- 
portunity offered, and sometimes the College in 
a body devoted a half or whole day to the work. 
The terraces in front of South College were 
made almost entirely by the students. This same 
spirit manifested by the students w^as also re- 
sponsible, at about this time, for an improvised 
gymnasium in the College grove, and for the 
College band, wdiich performed on all suitable 
occasions. The accompanying cut does not rep- 
resent the improvements in the way of grading, 
because it is taken from a somewhat fanciful 
sketch, made before old North College was built, 
and intended to show how the " Chapel Row " 
would look when completed as first planned. 
This accounts for the presence of the dormitory 
on the right, which was never erected. Some 
years afterwards, however, Appleton Cabinet was 
built on that spot, and carried out the original 
conception of a symmetrical college row of five 
buildings. The little cabin at the extreme left, 
on the site of the present Hitchcock Hall, was 
occupied by a family of negroes until about 1840. 

Edward Clark Hood, '97. 



I 




SENATE POLITICS. 

Harper had come back to visit his Alma Mater. 
He had experienced all the delights of seeing 
again his old haunts; had strengthened him- 
self with a draught from the College well; had 
climbed the Chapel tower to look once more at 
the fair valley of the Connecticut and its setting 
of green hills, as it stretches in every direction 
around the knoll from which Amherst's sons 
'' terras irradient; " then had mounted the three 
flights of stairs that led to the rooms at the top 
of the " Old South " dormitory, where he and 
"Reggie" Thompson had lived as mates; and 
now sat there surrounded by a circle of under- 
graduates. 

The talk had turned to the stand of the faculty 
on the Senate question, the boys being highly in- 
dignant at what they characterized as the arbi- 
trary measures that had been taken. 

Similar discussions of his college days came 
back in memory to the alumnus. He thought es- 
pecially of those long and bitter conferences held 
in this same room at the time of what they had 
afterwards titled " Reggie's escapade." And 
soon the boys were listening to the story. 

" It happened my Sophomore year. My room- 
mate, Reginald Thompson, also of my class, fell 
under suspicion of being concerned in a hazing 



50 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

scrape. This was the way it came about. There 
was a Freshman — unbearably green — as there al- 
ways is. There were also Sophomores anxious 
to remedy the evil, who waylaid him one night 
and put him through some pretty stiff paddling. 
Having been seized from behind he had caught 
a glimpse of but one of his tormentors, and this 
one he afterwards asserted was Reginald Thomp- 
son. Now, in the midst of the fun, the night- 
watchman, attracted by Freshie's yells, appeared 
on the scene. The Sophs fled, and as they hur- 
ried over Chapel Hill the watchman saw them 
brush past some one, with bag in hand, hurry- 
ing toward the train. 

" The Freshman reported the hazing, and Reg- 
gie was accused of being the ringleader. Of 
course he denied the charge ; but he had been out 
somewhere that night and could not prove an 
alibi, so his case indeed looked hopeless. 

" I remember, as if it were yesterday, the con- 
ference we held up here at that time, trying to 
devise some method of exonerating him. The 
Senate was then in full working order, and we 
had carefully sounded each member, only to find 
that, when Reggie should come before that body, 
the chances were for a close vote, and we feared 
against him. One senator from our own class, 
however, was still to be chosen. It remained for 
us to put in a friend. 

" ' Townsend is our man,' decided MacMas- 
ter, the class president. ' Now you fellows just 



52 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 



hustle round and get votes. Fraternity deals are 
poor tactics, but don't you stop for anything this 
time. We ought to get the Theta Epsilons and 
the Beta Gammas in a body, and a good share of 
the Oudens. That man Borden is expecting to 
run, and if he is elected, Reggie here might as 
well " pack up and git " right away.' 

" * Amen,' chimed in Reggie; 'Borden and I 
are no chums.' 

" Next day came the class meeting. Not a 
member was absent, excepting Reggie. The fel- 
lows disapproved of the hazing, and they meant 
to vote as they believed justice required. Bor- 
den managed to come in late, just as MacMas- 
ter was calling for order, and some of his ad- 
herents started a little boom for him by way of 
applause. He was a man of striking appearance 
— square-shouldered, with a large head, deep-set 
eyes, and a continual smirk about his mouth. 
He was leader of a certain set in the class, and 
had considerable influence. We knew he was 
no weak opponent. 

' The election was very close. Only Town- 
send and Borden were nominated. The prelim- 
inary ballot was two or three votes in our favor. 
A motion that it be declared formal was lost. 
And then, when the formal vote was cast, some 
of our adherents had gone over, and Borden was 
elected. Oh, we were mad! Yet there was noth- 
ing left us but to wait for the result of the Senate 
miceting. 



^1 

.re 1 1 



SENATE POLITICS. 53 

" That was held in the evening, and I was pres- 
ent as a witness. No new facts were brought out. 
So they went into secret session, and we were 
requested to remain outside. 

*' Now, some men in Reggie's circumstances 
would have shown a boastful indifference in the 
attempt to prove their manliness. But he was 
sensitive, and dreaded his father's disappointment 
and reproach. He was patient, however, and 
after a tedious wait the door of the President's 
office was opened by Borden, who, with an un- 
usual smirk, said : ' The culprit is summoned to 
reappear.' 

'' We followed him in, Reggie compressing his 
lips in the effort at composure as he faced the 
President, who stood at the further end of the 
long table. 

" 'Mr. Thompson, the Senate has decided that 
you shall suffer the penalty of expulsion for the 
hazing of which you have been accused. You 
are forbidden to attend further exercises or reci- 
tations of the College. I shall be glad to see you 
privately at my house in half an hour.' 

*' That was all. Reggie turned to go, when a 
loud knock stopped him, and immediately our 
class president entered, followed by an upper- 
classman. MacMaster was almost bubbling over 
with something new, and as soon as he had the 
President's attention he asked if fresh evidence 
might be introduced. 

" ' Certainly, if it has important bearing upon 



54 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

the case,' replied the President; then adding: 
' Mr. Thompson, you will wait a minute, please.' 

" The upper-classman then stepped forward 
and explained how he had just returned to town 
and learned of the hazing; that he had left Am- 
herst on the night it occurred; that he was, in 
fact, the man with the bag, whom the culprits 
had nearly stumbled on as they ran from the 
watchman. 

'' * I recognized but one of the men,' he con- 
cluded. ' However, I have known Mr. Thomp- 
son by sight, and I feel certain that he was not 
among them.' 

" You can imagine how we grasped at this new 
testimony. Even the President and senators 
looked relieved, for Reggie was a popular man, 
and they had assumed the responsibility of ex- 
pelling him on mere circumstantial evidence. As 
I glanced around the table to see the result of 
this unexpected turn, I caught a fierce gleam in 
Borden's eyes. The smirk had disappeared. 

" The President then began to question the 
new witness. ' You have said that Mr. Thomp- 
son was not among the men who passed you that 
night, but that you did recognize one of the 
party. Will you give us his name ? ' 

The man is fortunately present to contra- 
dict me if my accusation is false;' and, with a 
gesture, * It was — ' 

" ' Quiet, you fool! ' yelled Borden, leaping to 
his feet. * Gentlemen, allow me ! It was vour 



SENATE POLITICS. 55 

most humble servant! And, that the ends of 
justice may more quickly be attained, I shall 
sever my connection with Amherst College with- 
out requiring the formality of any mandate from 
this most illustrious and august body. For I 
feel that, representing — as you do — nothing but 
an impracticable theory, I have now the honor 
of addressing the most farcical body that ever 
pretended to administer the balm of justice — 
gentlemen of the Amherst College Senate! 

His story done. Harper settled back into his 
chair and relit his cigar. 

'' You know," he finally broke the silence, 
" there have been several pessimists among Am- 
herst's alumni, who, when I have recounted those 
words of Borden's, have openly agreed with him. 
They have maintained that the Senate — all very 
nice as a theor)- — was yet impmcticable and ab- 
surd. But you see that sun setting behind the 
Berkshire hills; you see the peaceful valley 
spread out below; and above, the quarter-moon, 
promising a perfect night! The idea of the Am- 
herst Senate sprang from a mind tuned to har- 
monies such as these, and they remain to prove 
that the ideal has its influence on our lives, how- 
ever intangible be its immediate results." 

Alfred Roelker, Jr., '95- 



THE COLLEGE WELL. 

'' And David longed and said, Oh that one would 
give me drink of the water of the well. * * ^11. 
Samuel, 23:15. 

The writer has been unable to secure evidence 
that David ever played harp for an Amherst 
musical organization, or indeed that he ever 
w^alked oiu- halls as a student of cube and Greek 
roots, and yet he has thus expressed what has 
frequently been the yearning of Amherst grads. 
in moments of reverie and reminiscence. 

The well? Yes, for us it is the well; just as for 
Italians Rome was the city; and for terrestrials 
the blazing ball that makes day, rather than some 
of the more distant orbs, is the sun. As regards 
well-Avorship we are eternally, relentlessly mono- 
theistic, and cry out with true Ephesian vehe- 
mence, " There shall be no other wells before 
It! " If there is an assertion whose absolute cer- 
tainty we are willing to champion against the 
scofifings of skeptics and the loud-mouthed bray- 
ings of meddlesome science, it is that the water 
of the College well forms for us the sweetest com- 
pound of hydrogen and oxygen that evei 
touched human lips. Does some hard-hearted 
chemist discover that it fairly wriggles with bac- 
teria? We care not, and will defend the discov- 



58 A// AMHERST BOOK. 

ered brand of bacteria as the fattest, juiciest and 
most palatable on the market. It is not for the 
wholesomeness, or quantity, or purity, or frigid- 
ity of the water from the College well that we are 
contending, but solely for its incomparable 
sweetness. We freely admit that much of this 
sweetness may be subjective sensation. The gist 
of the matter is, we are in love with the well, and 
whoever heard of Romeo's discoursing with ju- 
dicial impartiality upon the curve of Juliet's chin? 
The love which a grad. holds for the old well is 
but the apotheosis of undergraduate friendship. 
If, as Burton says, " a friend is a medicine for 
misery," surely the well has a strong lien upon 
that title. After a tongue-parching tramp along 
the Holyoke range with botanic malice afore- 
thought, or a rock-smashing expedition to Pel- 
ham, or a search after the elusive arbutus among 
the thickets of Pizgah, what liquid satisfaction we 
have gulped down beneath that peaked roof, 
reading the while inscriptions commerical, ath- 
letic, and personal! How enjoyably the wind- 
lass squeaked and the chain clanked as we 
coaxed the bucket downward into the rippling 
coolness! How the distant gurgling soothed us 
as we waited for the tightening of the chain, 
which told that all was ready for the up-trip! 
And when with spasmodic bursts of speed the 
bucket finally appeared from the gloomy depths, 
meanwhile dripping of its burden — for the great- 
hearted old pail always tried to bring up more 



THE COLLEGE WELL. 59 

than it could carry — when with a satisfied bump 
the stone settled down on the floor, and there 
before us, 

" With beaded bubbles winking at the brim/' 
was a bucket of refreshment worthy of the 
Olympians themselves, how we have longed for a 
poet to celebrate our old well in grateful song! 
Unhappily a college curriculum is not productive 
of Pindars and Horaces, else we could say to our 
fount what the Sabine farmer said to his famous 
Fons Bandusiae: 

'" Fies nobilium tu quoque fontium." 
Whether thou findest thy Horace or not, dear 
old well, have no fear. In our memory's temple 
thou shalt have a slirine by no means the least. 
Often the cry of David will voice itself in our 
hearts; and if a draught of thy waters were ob- 
tainable at no less a price, who shall say but that 
we would undergo even the sacrifice that Odin 
made for a drink of Mimir's well beneath the ash 
tree, Igdrasil? 

Herbert A. Jump, '96. 




ZXMHERST riri"Y YEARS AGO. 



Amherst in 1845, when I entered college, was 
very different from the Amherst of to-day. It 
was no less beautiful for situation, and its ram- 
part of mountains was a perpetual delight to the 
eye, as now; but the town was an ordinary coun- 
try village, the streets poorly kept, the green un- 
graded and uncared for, no churches or other 
public buildings that were not eyesores — a mem- 
ber of the faculty described the Congregational 
Church as " a cross between a dog-kennel and 
a cotton factory," — and few private houses except 
of the plainest New England type. In the spring, 
when the frost was coming out of the ground, 
the student had to wade through mud ankle-deep 
in going from the College to his meals. We used 
to talk of " excavating our boots " after a tramp 
in that mud. 

The nearest railroad station was at Northamp- 
ton, whither daily coaches ran, as also to Palmer 
and Birookfield. The College buildings were the 
old chapel, with south, middle (now north), and 
north dormitories. 

The fortunes of the College were then at their 
lowest ebb. The whole number of students in 
1845-46 was 118, the smallest since 1822-23, the 
second year of its history. In 1846-47 the num- 



AMHERST FIFTY YEARS AGO. 6t 

ber was 120. During these two years there were 
only nine persons in the facuky. How poorly 
they were paid Professor Tyler has told us in his 
History. But they worked with no less zeal and 
patience early and late — literally early, for in 
those days we had morning prayers and an hour's 
recitation before breakfast, which came at half 
past seven. 

Discipline was sufficiently strict. For a stu- 
dent to take a quiet walk on a Sunday out of 
church hours might be winked at, but one must 
not be seen driving for recreation between the 
sunsets of Saturday and Sunday, the limits of 
holy time in college reckoning. 

Hazing, however, seemed to be regarded by 
the authorities as a necessary evil. I do not 
know that any effort was made to punish or sup- 
press it. It was generally of a harmless sort, but 
sometimes a Freshman who forgot his proper 
position — from a Sophomoric point of view — 
was treated with exceptional severity. For my- 
self, I lived in constant dread of hazing, but was 
the victim of it only twice. I roomed on the 
ground floor of South College, northeast cor- 
ner, and while engaged in study one evening was 
hit in the back of the neck by a two-quart jug 
which came crashing through the wdndow. If its 
trajectory had varied a few inches I doubt 
whether my skull would have stood the blow^ 

On the other occasion I suffered in company 
with the entire class. The Freshmen had been 



62 AN AMHERST BOOK. 



invited to an evening reception at tlie Presi- 
dent's house, and when we returned to our rooms 
we found every keyhole plugged with wood. 
Thereby hangs a tale. It was the first year of 
President Hitchcock's administration. His pred- 
ecessor in office had given receptions to the 
Seniors, possibly to the Jimiors — I am not sure 
about that — but never to the lower classes. Pres- 
ident Hitchcock began with the Seniors, and the 
next week he entertained the Juniors. They ex- 
ulted in the honor done them, and told their So- 
I)homore friends that perhaps another year they 
could go to a " Prex's party." But the Sopho- 
mores had to wait only a week before they were 
asked to the Presidential mansion. Here every- 
body supposed the series of entertainments would 
end, and the Sophs plumed themselves accord- 
ingly. Of course they were disgusted when the 
Freshmen were similarly honored a week later, 
and they wreaked their spite upon us by the key- 
hole trick. 

In 1845 there were but two secret societies at 
Amherst — Alpha Delta Phi and Psi Upsilon. 
Delta Kappa Epsilon was introduced in 1846, 
and Delta Upsilon in 1847. The non-society men 
were in the majority, and in 1846 they formed 
an anti-secret society, whose motto was "Oudcn 
addon " (nothing secret). A Psi Upsilon man 
wittily perverted this, by a slight metathesis, into 
*' Oudena delon,'' which he rendered in the ver- 
nacular as " evidently nobody." The members of 



n 



AMHERST FIFTY YEARS AGO. 63 

this society were familiarly known as " Oiidens.'^ 
There were many non-society men who did not 
sympathize with them, but the " Oudens " occa- 
sionally managed to carry an election of officers 
in one of the two general literary societies to 
which all the students belonged. Seelye was 
President of Academia (one of these societies), 
and when his term of office expired one of the 
poorest scholars in the class was elected in his 
place. Seelye was so indignant that he declined 
to give the customary " Ex-Presidential " ad- 
dress, which he had prepared. A certain Psi Up- 

silon man remarked that " from Seelye to 

was a veritable descensus Az'erni." " Yes,'' said 
another, with a free translation of the Latin, " a 
h — of a descent, indeed! " 

What were our amusements? Few and simple, 
as a rule. The only gymnasium we had was the 
grove behind Middle College, where was a swing, 
a vaulting horse, a set of parallel bars, and a 
track for foot-racing round the edge of the grove. 
A kind of cricket known as " wicket " was played, 
and " loggerheads," a game which I never saw 
anywhere else, but which was identical with 
Shakespeare's " loggats " (Hamlet, v., i, 100). 
Baseball had not been developed out of the ju- 
venile " round-ball," nor had tennis been revived 
after centuries of desuetude. Tramps to Hol- 
yoke, Northampton, Sugarloaf, and elsewhere in 
the vicinity, were favorite recreations with most 
of us. Requests for leave to go to South Hadley 



64 A AT A MHERS T BOOK. 

were viewed with suspicion by the faculty. A 
friend in one of the upper classes was engaged 
to a girl in the Seminary there whose name was 
Mann. When he asked leave to go thither the 
professor inquired whether he was going to visit 
a young lady. '' I am going to see a Mann,'' was 
the reply, but the capital and the extra conson- 
ant were of course indistinguishable to the of- 
ficial ear, and permission was granted at once. 

Student pranks were not unknovv^i in those 
days, but they were generally harmless practical 
jokes; hke enticing a cah up stairs in a dormi- 
tory and tying the beast to a tutor's door-knob, 
or leading a stray horse into a recitation-room 
just before the professor was to arrive. Raids on 
neighboring orchards sometimes occurred, and 
poultry not bought of the regular dealer now and 
then furnished forth a feast in a student's room. 
I was once invited to such a supper by one of the 
best scholars in the class, who afterwards became 
a clergyman. He said he found the turkey " run- 
ning wild " in a barnyard at North Amherst. 
Festive entertainments of this kind, however, 
were rare among the students. This was the 
only one at which I personally "assisted." The 
unconventional method of obtaining the main 
dish for the supper was regarded then, as before 
and since in the collegiate code of morals, as a 
venial ofifense. 

Aside from such amusements and irregularities 
as I have mentioned, hard work, little play, and 



IN nrEMORIAM. 65 

no dissipation worthy the name, were the rule 
at Amherst in my college days. Hazing was the 
one disgrace, compared with which the pranks 
and fooleries I have referred to were, to my 
thinking, " pure innocence." 

William J, Rolfe, Litt. D., 49. 



IN MmORIAM. 

A Puritan was dead when Seelye died. 

A Puritan, indeed, of gentler mould, 

Of broader mind and heart than those of old; 
Serene, self-poised, unshaken by the tide 
Of passion or of faction. Not untried 

By his own feet the pathway long and bold 

He bade men climb. There lay his strength: 
what told 
Was not his words, but he behind them. Wide 
The river is and strong from such a source: 

The mingling streams grow purer in its 
course : 
The cities on its banks are noble, free. 

Thy sway. New England, through this mighty 
land, 
So long as sons like him are born of thee, 

Shall be maintained with firm, unerring hand! 

Henry Wickes Goodrich, '80. 



AN AMHERST LEGEND. 

Once Upon a time there was an Indian wizard, 
who lived in a hut where Amherst now stands; 
and he sold his soul to the devil and perished, as 
did Faust. But before he died he, through his 
godfather, the Devil, did many wicked things, 
and one at least which wrought two changes in 
the scenery near Amherst. 

THE STORY OP MOUNT WARNER. 

Many, many hundred moons ago, before a tree 
had been felled at Hadley, or even before Boston 
Bay had seen a white man's ship, an Indian girl 
lived in a beautiful spot on the top of Sugarloaf ; 
and from her dwelling she could look at all the 
broad valley and the river sparkling and danc- 
ing on its way to the sea. And the Indian girl 
was as pretty as the scene at which she looked — 
she was the fairest of the valley, of all the great 
valley hemmed in by the mountains. She had a 
lover who was strong and handsome, and the 
son of a chief; and she had another lover — the 
old Indian wizard who had sold his soul to the 
Devil. 

Now Neanita — for that was her name — loved 
the land where she lived, and she loved to sit for 
hours on the mountain, looking at the valley. 
In the morning she saw it grow bright and rosy 



A AT AMHERST LEGEND. 67 

under the sunrise, and sometimes sparkle with 
dew, as though it were a valley of diamonds. At 
noon she watched the broad river roll along in its 
slow way, and at evening with the son of the 
chief she would sit and see the moonlight bathe 
the land in white and pearl. And the valley was 
always brighter when Neanita looked at it; so 
that even now, when a sunbeam comes down 
through a dark day, people say that it is Nean- 
ita's smile. But she did not love the old wizard, 
and she never smiled on him; so in those days, 
when the sky grew black and the mountains rum- 
bled with thunder, the people knew that the old 
wizard was angry at her, and they trembled in 
their skin tents. But the Great Manitou looked 
down and smiled on it all, for he knew that good 
would win. 

Every evening the young chief came from his 
hunting to talk with Neanita on the edge of the 
cliff, and to look at the valley. And he came 
from the north, for he lived beyond the moun- 
tains. One evening Neanita sat alone on the 
clifif, and before her was the valley in the moon- 
light. She waited long, but there was no wel- 
come sound of moccasins on the grass behind 
her. The moon began to drop in the sky and it 
grew late. The stars twinkled down and laughed 
to see themselves in the river, but they pitied 
Neanita. Far behind her in the woods she heard 
a grinding noise; she thought she heard the 
death song, and she listened. And while she 



68 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

listened the sky grew dark for a moment, as 
though some great bird flew over. The stars and 
the moon were hidden, and Neanita was afraid. 
Then all was bright again, and down in the broad 
meadows before her was something she had 
never seen before. There, right in the center of 
the valley, lay a mountain as round as though 
it were some great warrior's death - pile. And 
she did not know what it was, but we call it 
Mount Warner. 

That day the wizard had been angry, and the 
mountains had rumbled much, for Neanita had 
told him to go, because she loved the young 
chief. The wizard sought his godfather, the 
Devil, and that evening, as the son of the chief 
was climbing the long ascent of Sugarloaf and 
looking at the stars above him, he was lifted in the 
air and with him a great piece taken from the 
mountain. The old wizard and his godfather, 
the Devil, in this way made the Notch in Sugar- 
loaf; and they put the piece down in the center 
of the valley, and under it they buried the young 
chief. 

And if you now visit Mount Warner you will 
find a beautiful purple flower that grows on the 
very summit, and people say that its roots are in 
the heart of the young chief. The Notch is still 
in Sugarloaf. The place that they call " Philip's 
Seat " is not the seat of the great chief, but where 
Neanita sat night after night looking at the val- 
ley and waiting for that lover whom she saw 



FAIR AMHERST. 69 

no more. And if at midnight you sit in that lofty 
nook you will see a star directly above you. That 
star is the soul of Neanita, and it looks forever 
at the purple flower of Warner. 

Frederick Houk Law, '95. 



raiR an H ERST. 

Fairest of all the fair, 

Pride of each glorious sun, 

Nobler each passing year, 
Amherst her race doth run. 

Richest of all the rich 

In Nature's bounteous gifts; 

Throned on her glorious hill, 
She many a storm-cloud lifts. 

Proudest of all the proud 
From sacred learning's halls 

Are the sons whom thou hast borne. 
Proud of thy classic walls! 

Fair Amherst, of thee we sing! 

Rich Amherst — in Nature's store ! 
Proud Amherst, thy praise shall ring 

Till time shall be no more ! 

Frederick W. Raymond, '99. 



AMHCRSr COMMENCEMENT riETY 
YEARS AGO. 



During the first decade of Amherst's histor)/ 
the public Hterary exercises of the students were 
confined to Commencement, prize speaking, and 
an annual society exhibition. Of these the Com- 
mencement exercises have continued, with some 
modification and melioration, up to the present 
time. The Kellogg prize speaking began in 1825, 
the chartered year of the College, and, with one 
exception, has been held annually since. The 
society exhibitions maintained a nomadic exist- 
ence until about ten years ago. 

It was a most welcome custom, during the '30s, 
'40s and '50s to brmg in on Tuesday of Com- 
mencement week one or two of the most eminent 
orators the country could ai¥ord. Edward Ever- 
ett, Henry Ward Beecher (who himself was grad- 
uated from Amherst in '34), John B. Gough, 
Charles Sumner, Tayler Lewis, Dr. Hickok, Dr. 
Richard Salter Storrs, class of '39. and Dr. A. P. 
Peabody wxre among those who honored our 
stage. The orators were invited in turn by the 
literary societies — Athenae, Alexandria and So- 



72 AA^ AMHERST BOOK. 

cial Union. The offices of president and marshal 
of the occasion were the honors of the Senior 
class, and sharp political work was done to se- 
cure these positions. 

The great ambition of nearly every mxan in Col- 
lege was to win an '' appointment " at Com- 
mencement, and it did stimulate hard and suc- 
cessful study. But, oh! the heart-burnings and 
destruction of hopes when the standing was an- 
nounced! No one but the valedictorian was sat- 
isfied that the right thing had been done, and 
each man thought he should have been placed a 
little higher on the scale. More than one grad- 
uate was never seen again on the Campus after 
that day, because of dissatisfaction with his stand- 
ing in class. 

The whole community manifested a deep in- 
terest in these exercises, crowding the church — 
now College Hall — to every corner, and listening 
attentively to a programme which rarely occupied 
less than five hours, and that, too, in the early 
part of August. The only light and diverting 
feature of these exercises was occasionally a 
'' Colloquy," with costumes and scenic fixtures. 
Music, indoors and out, was furnished by a brass 
band. There was no alumni dinner then, but 
for many years it was the custom to serve a cold 
lunch in the basement of College Hall. Never- 
theless, there was a whole-hearted interest in 
these occasions which has not been manifested 
in later years. Every student stayed through all 



COMMENCEMENT FIFTY YEARS AGO. 73 

the exercises, packed up after the festivities of 
Commencement night, and left town next morn- 
ing by early or extra stage. 

One imposing spectacle of Commencement day 
was the procession about town and to the church. 
At 9 o'clock the students gathered on the Chapel 
steps and soon formed in line behind the band, 
the Freshmen leading. The procession marched 
down Main street to the Amherst House, then 
turned " column right " toward East street. 
When the rear end had reached the hotel a halt 
was made to give the band a chance for breath 
and to receive the Governor of the Common- 
wealth, the President, trustees, faculty, the orator 
of the day, distinguished guests and the alumni — 
all led by the high sheriiT of the county in his 
blue coat and brass buttons. Then the combined 
procession moved along the east side of the Com- 
mon, until *' column right " turned the line across 
the Common and up to the front of the church, 
where the head of the procession was met by a 
dozen constables, carrying black staves about six 
feet long. Then the Freshmen made open order, 
marched " closed up " to the middle door, took 
" inward face," and shoulder to shoulder uncov- 
ered; the Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors ex- 
ecuting the same movements in order. Then the 
high sherifif led the distinguished persons up be- 
tween the lines into the church. The Seniors 
followed and took reserved seats. After them the 
Juniors closed in, and many secured good places. 



74 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

The Sophomores and Freshmen made the same 
attempt, but several were sure to find only stand- 
ing-room left. The galleries were " reserved ex- 
pressly for ladies," and no women were allowed 
in the body of the house. The galleries were al- 
ways full, however, and no men were allowed 
there, save the ushers and " skeddies," who dis- 
tributed the schedules ; for the programme of the 
exercises was kept a secret until the President 
proclaimed "Schaemae distribuantur," immedi- 
ately after the opening prayer. 

Meantime, outside the church, a motley crowd 
was making a pretense to gain an entrance, but 
more evidently enjoying a friendly push and 
scramble with the constables and their black 
poles. After the services had fairly commenced, 
the outside crowd, numbering nearly a thousand 
people, from Pelham, Shutesbury, Hadley and 
other neighboring towns, repaired to the Com- 
mon. Here, during the previous night, tents and 
booths had been set up, where were offered for 
sale whips and other trinkets, oysters, sweet cider, 
candy, gingerbread and other edible and drink- 
able articles, especially " mead," a drink now 
superseded by soda and vichy. The day seldom 
closed without a '' ring," in which was to be 
found a wrestling match; and sometimes a small 
" mill " was formed, when two fellows got mad 
over some trifle, and could not be satisfied until 
they had pounded each other for a few minutes 



SI BE RIA M PA PER S. 7 5 

before the black poles of the constables separated 
them. 

All this Commencement crowd vanished about 
i860, when cattle shows and county fairs were in- 
stituted, and one of the salient features of Am- 
herst Commencement became a matter of history. 

Edward Hitchcock, '49. 



ON READING KCNNAN^S SIBERIAN 
PAPERS. 

I caught a cry across the waters flung. 
So proud and piteous (as if Despair 
Held forth a people's heart and laid it bare 

For all the world to gaze on), that it stung 

My helpless heart to pity. Then I clung 
Close to God's judgment bar in silent prayer. 
As though the heart of mercy, throned there, 

Might heed that cry of pain from Russia wrung. 

But soon my silence broke, and there upwelled, 

Hot, bold, and passionate, '' Our Father's God, 
Free Thou these Russian hearts, in fetters held ! 
Nerve Thou these Russian hands to wield Thy 
rod 
And scourge the oppressor, till, by Freedom 
felled, 
The tyrant's throne be crumbled to the sod! '* 
Allen Eastman Cross, '%6. 

From '' The C?'i/zcy February, 1890. 



MEMORY SONG TO AMHERST. 



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MEMORY SONG TO AMHERST. 77 



II. 

Here, in toil and stress of trial, 

Here, in sturdy self-denial, 

Wrought, to found these hoary walls, 

Men whose life-long consecration, 

Rich in sacred inspiration, 

Us to high endeavor calls, — 
Truth and high endeavor calls. 

III. 

From these halls to action's glory, 
Deeds unsung or famed in story, 

Pitching tent on many a strand, 
Forth have gone the alumni, wearing 
Amherst's seal, and nobly bearing 
Amherst's name to every land, 
Honoring her in every land. 

IV. 

Nature's bounteous wealth surrounding. 
Friendship's, learning's joys abounding, 
Crown these youthful college days; 
Yes, her loyal sons remember, 
Down to life's austere December, 

Dear old Amherst's worthy praise : — 
Never die sweet Amherst's praise ! 

John F. Genung. 



THE GLEE. 

When night enshrouds old Amherst, 

And starry darkness falls 
O'er all the town and campus, 

Veiling chapel, church and halls ; 
Through open windows softly 

Comes stealing in to me 
The sound of students' voices. 

As they sing some jolly glee. 

When sad thoughts crowd upon me, 

And my path seems dark and drear. 
And days drag on so slowly — 

A week seems as a year; 
When I think of the past I've wasted, 

What the future is to be; 
Why, some way things look brighter 

When the fellows sing the glee. 

W^hen years shall leave me weary. 

And age shall bow my head, 
I'll falter back to Amherst 

When the leaves are turning red ; 
I'll seek the same old window. 

And sinking on my knee, 
My heart will echo softly 

As the fellows sing the g\et. 

L. C. Stone, '96. 



Al^HERSr rORTY YEARS AGO. 

It was the third of July, 1855, towards mid- 
night, in an upper room in old North College, 
where Williston Hall now stands. I was reading 
•'' Dream Life," and being thirsty, went out to 
the well and brought in a brimming pail of water. 
Some Seniors who roomed down town had ar- 
rayed themselves in white duck suits, silk hats 
and patent leather shoes, obtained a supply of 
fire crackers, and came into the east entry to 
bang them under the doors and through the key- 
holes in anticipation of the Fourth. My room 
was the last, and as soon as they started down I 
seized my pail of water, went to the front hall 
window, and as they came out on the stone 
steps, four stories below, I held out the pail at 
arm's length, gave it a clean tip-over and drew 
back. As I learned afterwards the water struck 
Rufus Choate on the hat and soaked him to his 
shoes. After a moment's silence I heard them 
coming back iip-stairs with a very resolute tread. 
Bolting my door, I seized an iron poker and 
stood ready to " defend my castle." 

They stopped on the second floor, however, 
and kicked into sphnters the door of Bradbury 
brothers, suspecting them. They, awakened thus 
rudely, protested their innocence and made a 



8o A AT A MHER ST BO OK. 

great row. The next morning the brothers made 
complaint to Tutor Rowland against these haz- 
ing Seniors. Expecting that an investigation 
would follow I went to Tutor Rowland and told 
of my participation in the affair. Nothing was 
done, and I heard no more about it until I hap- 
pened to meet Choate two weeks after. He 
reached out his hand and said: ''You did that 
well! " " I'm glad you think so," I replied, and 
we agreed to call it even. 

Another student prank comes vividly to mind. 
There was a bowlder walk extending from the 
foot of the stairs near North College to the high- 
way in front of the President's house. It was 
a treacherous means of passage, especially after 
dark in spring or fall, when, instead of stepping 
on the tops of the bowlders, one was liable to step 
between and go over shoe in mud. About ten 
o'clock one night, by mutual understanding, 
crowbars and picks w^ere taken from Appleton 
Cabinet, then building, and beginning at the 
highway the bowlders were dug up and rolled 
down the hill toward the Boltwood house. Some 
of them were large and bedded deep, leaving 
great holes. Not a word was spoken. The chug 
of bars and picks was the only noise, and the 
fire that flew from striking steel on stone was 
the only light. The work moved right up to the 
foot of the stairs, when some one discovered that 
Tutor Rowland was leaning out of his third-story 
window in North College to identify whom he 




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82 AN AMHERST BOOK 



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could. The work was done, the band scattered, 
every fehow returned his tool and hustled off to 
bed without a light. 

The next morning when " Prof. Ty " was go- 
ing up to (jreek, the janitor, Mr. Ayres, was at 
work with a hoe digging down the elevations and 
filling in the holes to make the walk passable. 
'' You are making a good improvement here," 
said the professor. '' Do you think so? " said Mr. 
Ayres. " 1 do," replied the professor. It was a 
hit, and no effort was made to discover the dig- 
gers. We have done many easier jobs, but never 
one more satisfactory. 

Forty years ago the two literary societies, Ath- 
enae and Alexandria, were accustomed to hold 
in the Chapel, soon after the opening of College, 
an " electioneering meeting," which correspond- 
ed to the modern fraternity " rushing season." 
At the meeting in my Freshman year George 
Partridge, '54, a Senior, had spoken, giving many 
statistics and facts to show us Freshmen the su- 
periority of his society. The Senior from the 
other society began by saying he was aware that 
his opponent had been brooding over records for 
weeks past, but it would not amount to anything, 
for we read, in the good book that " the part- 
ridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not." 
Tiiis witticism was cheered loudly and had great 
' weight with the Freshmen. 

Early in the fifties there were few buildings on 
College Hill. All the recitation rooms were in 



A MHERS r FOR TY \ 'EARS A GO. S3 

the old Chapel, except one in the Octagon and 
another in old South CoUeg'e. The Chapel aisles 
and pews were bare and noisy; the pew doors 
were continually slanuning as the boys passed 
in and out. The recication-rooms were seated with 
plank benches rising in tiers. It was in the day 
of President Stearns that mattings, chairs, pic- 
tures and statuettes came into use. The pew 
doors were taken off, accommodations made 
more comfortable, and a loolv and feeling of fine- 
ness crept through tlie College. 

Greek, Latin and Mathematics were the trin- 
ity to whom we all sacrificed. There were other 
studies, but it was true, " now abideth these 
tlyee." Nothing was optional, and there were 
no " cuts." We exercised in the grove and had 
chapel before breakfast. There were no glee, 
banjo, or mandolin clubs, no scientific baseball, 
football or tennis. The Greek fraternities had no 
chapter houses, and only one had rooms outside 
the dormitories. According to the boys in those 
days President Hitchcock was the greatest and 
best man; Professor Tyler the most discerning — 
that is, he knew boys as well as Greek ; Professor 
Snell was the best teacher, and Professor Haven 
the deepest thinker and most fini_shed orator. 

Forty years ago a fellow could go through 
Amherst College comfortably for $1,200. We 
went for the education. Intellectual attainments 
and religious life were what nearly all sought 
The government of the College was simple and 



84 AAT AMHERST BOOK. 



I 



easy. It governed itself for the most part. Every- 
thing was plain and inexpensive. There were no 
styles that had to be followed, and yet a great 
many young men got a training that has made 
them leaders in the high callings of the world. 
New Amherst ma}' be better, but we of forty 
years ago can never cease to feel " Blessed be 
Old Amherst." 

E. G. Cobb, '57. 



TRAZAR AUGUSTUS STEARNS.* 

A brave and beauteous boy — scarce more 

In years, in spirit manhood's own — 
When once he heard of battle's roar. 

And thought of that sad race whose moan 
Rose helplessly, he put aside 

Life's sweets and freely sacrificed 
His all for liberty. He died; 

But memory has canonized 
His chivalry. Fair Honor weaves 

Her laurel for his brow, and Truth — 
The Queen whose will he followed — leaves 

Her tears upon his tomb to soothe 
Her sorrow, while the lips of Fame 

Lisp ceaselessly his deathless name. 

Seymour Ransom, '92. 

*A son of President Stearns and a member of the 
Class of 1862. Killed at the head of his regiment in 
the battle of Newbern, N. C, 1862. 



INITISTED. 

Somebody started up the fire in the chapter- 
house parlor, we all gathered round it, and then 
they called on me for a story. All the fellows 
were looking at me, and the boyish faces that 
were full of college life brought back to my mind 
boyish faces of another day. As I gazed into the 
fire the red flames, hungrily licking the big sticks 
and roaring in the way of all flame, formed pic- 
tures before rne. The roaring was like the sound 
of wind in tall trees, and I seemed to see the 
great branches tossing about in the blaze. Then 
right on the flames came a face, and my momen- 
tary start at the apparition was noticed, for the 
boys again implored a story. What could I do? 
The fire had brought back memories, so I told 
the one weird story I knew, and for a college 
tale I think it was sadder than it should have 
been. 

" Boys," I began, '' I suppose life at Amherst is 
just as full of fun now as it used to be in my time, 
but still you all must know of one or more seri- 
ous things. Let me ask you, in the first place, 
never to impose on a man's weakness. God help 
3^ou if you do! That's my moral, so don't look 
for any other. My Senior year we pledged here 
a man with an antipathy. He was a fine-looking, 
honest, manly fellow, and all you could ask, ex- 



86 AAT AMHERST BOOK. 

cept — I don't know how we found it out — he was 

- afraid of the dark and of h[gh places. I think if 
he had gone on the Chapel tower he would have 
fainted, and as for leaving lamp-light at night, 
that was a thing he never dared to do. 

" Well, when it came time for initiation we 
thought it would be great sport to make him less 
afraid of the dark, and so we planned an elab- 
orate scheme for his * out-door work.' After the 

- usual nonsense that you all know about, we tied 
his hands to his sides, wrapped him up in a big 
blanket, bandaged his eyes, made a cushion for 
his head, and set of¥ in an old lumber wagon we 
found somewhere, and with a livery horse. The 

- night was dark as pitch — all cloudy overhead — 
but we knew the road, and so did the horse. 
Four of us went. Two lay beside the Freshman 
in the bottom of the wagon and one sat by me, 
for I was driving. We took the road to Hadley 
and lashed the horse all the way. The Fresh- 
man bumped around in his blanket, but endured 

> the torture without a murmur. It was just a 
matter of darkness through the two-mile woods 
and by the old witch swamp, but it got rather 
creepy when we had passed Hadley — you know, 
turning down the road to the left — and were 
steering for the mountain. The horse was nerv- 
ous, too, for it sweated white in the dark. But 
I gritted my teeth and hung on for dear life, 
while the fellow next me kept laying on the whip. 
Sometimes we were in the road and sometimes 



88 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

in the ditch. As we dashed along by the river 
I suddenly thought ' What if the horse got too 
near the bank, and that fellow all tied up in the 
blanket! ' I remember ratthng through that old 
covered bridge so that it threatened to come 
down about our ears. Bump! bump! we went, 
over knolls and into gullies, and soon the dark 
mass of Holyoke loomed up out of the black 
night. Across the river we could see Tom faint- 
ly outlined against the sky. 

" We drove up the mountain as far as we 
could, then tied the horse and walked, with our 
man blindfolded, the rest of the way. Near the 
top we steered off into the brush and over the 
ledges. Of course we had a lantern and picked 
our way carefully. We had a fiendish plan, but 
we were greater devils than we knew. Our pris- 
oner stumbled along and sometimes fell, but 
never said a .word. After a long chmb we 
reached the spot we were aiming for — the top of 
a clifif about loo feet high — and there we halted. 
The wind sighed in the trees Hke spirits, the 
leaves brushed together and the branches 
creaked; the awful lonesomeness of the place al- 
most frightened us. Well, we four poor fools 
took that Freshman, wrapped him closer in the 
blanket so that he wouldn't catch cold, and then 
tied him to a big tree that stood right on the edge 
of the clifif. We secured him so that he wouldn't 
get loose and fall over the clifif; then told him 
his position, and made him promise all sorts of 



INITIA TED. 89 

things. All the while the wind was muttering up 
and down in the big mountain, as though its old 
Indian devils had come back again. Way off 
beyond were Tom and Nonotuck, with their wild 
stories and legends. One of the fellows told some 
of the more awful of these stories in such a way 
as to magnify their horror, and before he got 
through we all had the shivers. Then we went 
off and left the Freshman tied to the tree, being 
careful to remove the blindfold, so that he could 
appreciate the situation. We were going to leave 
him for two hours alone in the dark, hanging 
over the edge of that cliff, with his mind torment- 
ed by about as devilish a lot of ghost stories as I 
ever heard. We went back to where we had 
tied the horse, and were all filled with our scheme 
and its results, which we knew would be the cur- 
ing of that fellow's fear of the dark, at least. 

" The first flash and rumble of an approaching 
storm suddenly woke us from our self-gratula- 
tion, and we started for our Freshman. As we 
clambered breathlessly over the rocks the man 
with the lantern stumbled and smashed it, and 
we lost the path. Then the storm broke upon us 
in fury. The wind shrieked and howled like a 
mad demon. The rain poured in torrents, and 
the thunder cracked and roared and rumbled, 
and broke the sky and the mountain, too. The 
lightning now lit up all around us intensely 
white, so that we could see the great trees tossing 
about in the storm, and then all was black again. 



'P AN AMHERST BOOK. 

In the flashes we caught ghmpses of each other's 
white, scared faces, as we phmged on through 
those awful woods, but nowhere could we dis- 
cover that tree or cliff. Suddenly there came a 
fearful crash, and not 300 feet away a tree was 
shattered before our eyes. We dropped with 
fright, and lay there in the dark — ^four half-crazed 
boys, praying wildly for God to save us. Then we 
thought of that poor fellow tied at the top of the 
cliff, and dreadful apprehensions tormented us. 

" The storm cleared at last, the stars came out, 
and the night grew brighter. Where was our 
Freshman ? We said little, but each one feared that 
somewhere on that great, dark mountain was a 
maniac tied to a tree on the edge of a cliff. 
Trembling from our past terror and this new 
fear we hurried on. Soon we found the cliff, but — 
burned ropes, burned blanket, a sphntered tree. 
Struck by lightning! 'Good God!' cried one 
fellow and fainted. We were murderers — horri- 
ble, hideous murderers! Not one of us dared go 
to the bottom of the cliff, where the body must 
have fallen. Dazed and overwhelmed we stum- 
bled down the mountain. We would tell our ter- 
rible crime to the President and give ourselves 
up. Then what?— we were murderers! 

" On the long ride home not a word was 
spoken. All I could think of was an awful crash, 
a blinding light, and a white face at the bottom 
of a cliff. That face haunts my mind to-day, as it 
lay there, ghastly and cold, under the starhght. 



INITIATED. 91 

" We went to my room, locked ourselves in, 
and were there till noon, listening for a knock 
that we thought was sure to come, and suffering 
all the pangs of mental torture. At noon, with 
white, downcast faces and heavy hearts, we set 
out for the President's house. Just as we reached 
his gate we ran squarely upon — the Freshman! 
For an instant we staggered with amazement, 
then rushing forward we overwhelmed him with 
our excited words. 

" His explanation was simple enough. Hear- 
ing the storm coming, and frightened at the 
thought of his position, he had by almost super- 
human effort worked himself free. He had run 
through the woods and down the mountain to a 
farm-house, reaching it just in time to escape 
the full fury of the storm. The lightning had 
struck the tree while we were cowering in the 
woods. It was a miraculous escape. 1 don't 
know whether he was cured of his fear or not, but 
as for me, the sight of Holyoke makes me shud- 
der, and a thunder storm revives the old terror. 
We were the ones who had been initiated." 

Frederick H. Law, '95. 




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OLD UNCLE. 



OLD UNCLE. 

He is a sure sign of spring — this old man. On 
a raw, windy March morning, perhaps, you are 
going home from recitations. Picking your way 
along the muddy walk, you button your coat 
closer and thrust your hands deep into your 
pockets. Splash! Splash! on you go, longing 
for your pipe and your fire. You turn a corner 
and come face to face with him. 

" Have some maple sugar? " 

There he stands, just as he stood twelve 
months ago. There is the same old, rusty, dent- 
ed beaver hat; the same thick mass of soft, white 
hair, almost covering his wrinkled face ; the same 
weather-scarred coat, with its nicked buttons and 
frayed buttonholes ; the same stick ; the same pail ; 
and, for all you know, the same cakes of sugar. 
He is as unchangeable as Old Father Time. 

Shifting his cane to his left hand, he takes 
from the pail one of the yellow disks and holds 
it up for you to examine. 

" Well, uncle," you say, putting the cake into 
your pocket, " I suppose we can look for warm 
weather, now that you are around ! How did you 
pass the winter? " 

" Well, I don't know. Kinder like a Avood- 
chuck, I guess," he answers in a drawling tone. 



94 



AN AMHERST BOOK. 



*' There ain't nothin' goin' on out my way. I git 
to meetin' now and then ; you send a fine preach- 
er out there. He's got the gosp'l in his heart, 
an'U be a big one by'n by. Have some maple 
sugar? " 

. This last is addressed to a new comer, who, 
like yourself, pauses to have a word or two. Then 
another- arrives, and still others, until quite a 
group surrounds the old fellow. 

" Say, uncle, give us a song! " shouts some 
one. " Give us ' Down went McGinty.' " 

'' I — don't — know — that — tune." 

" Well, ' Climb Up Ye Little Children.' " 
i " Eh? " 

" ' Chmb Up Ye Little Children.' " 

Uncle looks passively at the crowd, but does 
not reply. 

'''Home, Sweet Home!' 'Home, Sweet 
Home! ' " suggest several. 

With a low, far-away voice the old man begins 
to sing. Presently his voice grows louder and 
louder, until passers-by stop to listen. On, on, 
he sings, entirely oblivious of the curious audi- 
ence around him. At last, when the song is fin- 
ished, the crowd separates. 

Once more alone, and unmindful of the sharp 
wind, the old man looks up and down the street, 
and calmly awaits the arrival of another pur- 
chaser. 

Herman Babson, '93. 



POIl^OT. 

Poirot, the lame beggar, crouched on the cold, 
hard stones. Up and down the broad steps hur- 
ried the crowd. There were ladies and gentle- 
men, tradesmen and laborers, but no one turned. 
It was snowing fast. Plakes from every side 
raced toward the old man, who was hidden be- 
neath his mantle; but for Poirot the flakes that 
rushed so madly and settled so lightly made 
heavenly music. As the crystal stars touched his 
tattered garments they brought forth a more de- 
licious harmony than could the summer rain, 
had it in Tempe swept Apollo's harp. Dim grew 
the city; but it was the sweet haze through which 
he saw his native France. Oh, the mountains! 
and the clouds! and the sky! and the blue stream 
beneath the vineyards! 

Now beautiful creatures were bearing him far 
above the city, where the thousands still suf- 
fered — on, on, through mile upon mile of the 
liquid ether. Slowly the glimmering earth grew 
fainter; it shone like a star in the eye of night. 
Poirot wondered at the admiration and love of 
those who carried him, until they crossed a 
stream more transparent than the clearest mir- 
ror, and there he saw that he himself was a 
creature more beautiful than any of those who 
bore him. Beyond was a cloud whiter than light, 
but when Poirot had crossed the river, thought 
could go no farther; and Poirot went on; and the 
melody died away. 

In the morning they shook off the snow and 
said: "Poor Poirot! If he suffered so in his 
death, let us at least give him a decent burial." 

Robert Porter St. John, '93. 



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ITIll COLLIlCI: IM 1560. 

College Hill in i860, as shown on the opposite 
page, had assumed very much the appearance 
that it has to-day. Almost the only change has 
been caused by the growth of the trees, which 
now relieve the stern outlines of the buildings. 
Of all the buildings that have been erected since 
i860 only one could be seen from the point of 
view taken in the accompanying picture. 

In 1835 the original President's house, now 
occupied by the Psi Upsilon fraternity, became 
unsatisfactory, and the present one was built 
upon land purchased in 1841. The Library, the 
first stone building on the campus, was erected 
in 1853. It included the square portion at the 
northeast corner and the tower. The present 
reading-room was used also for the stack. It had 
all the shelf room that would be needed, the 
authorities supposed, for the next fifty years. In 
less than half that time, however, the place was 
overcrowded, and it became necessary to add the 
present stack, which has a capacity for about 
one hundred thousand volumes. The Lawrence 
Observatory and Woods Cabinet, familiarly 
known from its form as " The Octagon," was 
erected in 1847 ^^ the site of the first meeting 
house of the First Congregational Society. The 
geological lecture room was added in 1855. The 
collections in this building cover the subjects of 



lOO AA' AMHERST BOOK. 

geology and mineralogy, those representing the 
geology of Massachusetts and Connecticut being 
especially complete and valuable. 

Appleton Cabinet, the southernmost building 
of Chapel Row, was also built in 1855, ^.nd has 
since been the home of the Hitchcock Ichniolog- 
ical collection, the Gilbert collection of Indian 
relics, and the Adams Zoological collection. Wil- 
liston Hall and East College were built two years 
later. The story of their appearance is an inter- 
esting one in the history of the college. One bit- 
ter cold night in January, 1857, Old North Col- 
lege burned to the ground. The students were 
all attending society meetings in the other dor- 
mitories. One of them had left an open fire burn- 
ing in his grate, and that fire caused the mis- 
chief. The wind blew a gale from the northwest, 
and it was impossible to do anything to save the 
building. Had the wind blown more directly 
from the north the whole Chapel Row must 
have gone. The ashes had hardly ceased to 
smoke when Hon. Samuel WilHston, of East- 
1 hampton, came generously to the rescue and of- 
fered to erect, on the same site, a building which 
should contain a chemical laboratory, rooms for 
the two literary societies, and an alumni hall, on 
condition that the trustees would engage to re- 
place the burned dormitory. This proposition 
the trustees gladly accepted, and work on the 
two buildings was at once begun. The site 
chosen for the new dormitory was in the rear 



THE COLLEGE LN i860. loi 

of the campus, just west of where the church 
now stands, and from its location it received 
the name East College. The burning of Old 
North College thus proved to be, as President 
Stearns said, " one of the greatest catastrophes 
and one of the greatest blessings the college ever 
experienced." In Williston Hall the chemical 
laboratory occupied the ground floor, and the 
two literary societies the second floor, the rooms 
having separate entrances and no means of com- 
munication with each other. The large hall on_ 
the third floor was used for examinations and 
alumni gatherings, until it was needed as a gal- 
lery for the collection of casts which Professor 
Mather was making. It is a noteworthy fact that 
the student who carelessly left his open fire burn- 
ing in Old North College was the man to whose 
enthusiasm and energy the college is indebted 
for its collection of very excellent casts. 

The Barrett Gymnasium was built in i860, and 
is said to be the first building in the country 
erected for gymnastic work in charge of a reg- 
ularly appointed professor. It is of Pelham gran- 
ite, seventy feet long and fifty wide. The main 
floor, formerly used for class exercises, and con- 
taining the heavy apparatus, is in the second 
story. The lower floor contained the professor's 
room, dressing rooms, bowling alley, etc. The 
old building is now used as a storehouse for col- 
lege debris. 

Edward Clark Hood, '97. 



PROrCSSOR CHARLIE. 

Dear Old Charlie! Often have I seen hhn rak- 
ing the leaves, a sure sign of the approach of 
winter. Rumor has it that a Freshman (utpote 
homo viridis) once pointed at the " Professor's " 
heap of. burning leaves and cruelly remarked 
that the leaves were almost as black as his face. 
Whereat CharHe crushed the Freshman by re- 
torting : " And nex' spring they'll be as green 
a;s you be." But such a legend is a departure 
from our purpose, which is to throw a side-light 
on the old fellow's history and character. 

His name is Charles Thompson. At least, that 
is the name he has often had me write on receipts 
for wages, or some similar document. He once 
assured me that he did not ask help because he 
could not write, but because it was cold weather 
and his fingers were numb, and " when his fin- 
gers are numb he can write only coarse hand." 

We were once told from the chapel rostrum 
that this " Professor " had not won his title '' in 
any lines of academic distinction among us." Is 
that a reason why we love him so much? He 
wears well, at any rate, for during term time in 
the last three years not a day has passed in which 
I have failed to rejoice at the sight of his kind old 
face, save a week at the time of his one brief 
illness. And from my window in South College 







PROFESSOR CHARLIE. 



I04 A/i AMHERST BOOK. 

I have often seen an alumnus clamber up " Dys- 
pepsia Hill " from the Central Massachusetts sta- 
tion, stop to gaze at the Chapel Row a moment, 
and then head straight for the dusty regions of 
sub-Chapel " to see if Professor Charlie remem- 
bered him." The old man does recall him as a 
rule. May he remember me at some future date, 
when, like Macaulay's New Zealander, I return 
and behold a new College Hall and the ruined 
columns of the Old Chapel! Old alumni some- 
times ask him why he doesn't die. He always 
tells them, " I don't know; I expec' to go when 
the good Lord takes me." And thus he has lived 
on; Dr. W. S. Tyler is the only one now alive 
who was a professor here when Charlie came to 
Amherst. 

Old Charlie has two histories. There is that 
deHghtful romance of his having been a slave, 
and how Captain Frazar Stearns purchased his 
freedom and brought him north as a body ser- 
vant, later to drift into the service of the Col- 
lege. I hope I shall not be thought an iconoclast 
if I tell the true version. The Professor was born- 
as free as any of us, in Portland, Maine. Only a 
few minutes ago he was sitting on a trunk in the 
lower hall, swinging his legs and chirruping 
away, telling me all about himself. He said that 
w^hen he was sixteen he sailed on the ship " War- 
ren," of the port of Warren, Maine, bound on a 
whaling cruise. He described pictorially the first 
whale, and how they finally captured it; how he 



PROFESSOR CHARLIE. 105 

once saw a whale kill five men in the jolly-boat; 
how they were out four years and a half and 
brought back five hundred and ten barrels of oil. 
Again he went before the mast, this time on a 
bark — •" Kremblin " was the name I caught, and 
he had " forgotten " how to spell it. On this 
cruise he went " down to London and then down 
to China:" saw Java and "lots of monkeys," 
Africa and '' lions and elephants." Professor 
Charlie remarked that Africa is a " mighty pretty 
island, but drefiful hot," and then, moralizing, 
" It's a mighty fine thing fer a young fellah to 
travel 'round a lot." In a few minutes he wrenched 
me around the globe, from Santiago to Siberia, 
from Mocha to the Congo Free State, comment- 
ing on them as places of interest in his voyage. 

On his return to Cambridgeport, President 
Stearns hired him as man-of-all-work, and Char- 
lie held that position a year or two after President 
Stearns came to Amherst in 1854. Then he came 
into his present place as Professor of Dust and 
Ashes in the College. For a brief period he was 
head-janitor. He had charge of the chapel clock 
for many years; sometimes he tells me, without 
bitterness, that he thinks he could run it better 
than his successor runs it to-day. During the 
war he was full of interest for his Southern breth- 
ren, and raised the flag at the first news of every 
Federal victory. So' he has filled an important 
place here, nor has he ever incurred the ill-will 
of any one, faculty or student. 



io6 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

I need not speak of his '' trailing-footed " gait, 
his big shoes or his dehberate motions. He is too 
famiHar to us all to need such personal descrip- 
tion. But one thing I shall never forget: There 
comes a rumble in the hall, I hear him talking to 
himself just outside the door, and then he taps the 
panels with his broom-handle. The door is opened 
and there he stands, smiling all over, dragging a 
five-bushel basket, and saying " T'hee, got any 
waste-papah? " May he live long to ask that 
question of many a student whose class numbers 
in the nineteen hundreds! May he still be here 
when my class has its quinquennial and decennial 
— until '' the good Lord takes him! " 

Roberts Walker, '96. 



DRCAHS. 

Such perfumes these no city breeze 

E'er found in sun-swept streets of town. 
I dreamed of far blue hills, horizon-walled. 

And pathless forests still and brown. 
Where, mid the noontide hush, 

The cat bird called 
In tangled underbrush. 

And when I wakened, thought came back 
Through forest shades of birch and tamarack, 

W. S. ROSSITER, '8^. 



AN UNriNISHED STORY. 

Ned Osborne had been out of college four 
years now, and that made six years that he had 
been examining all the girls he met with 
thoughts about their fitness to be his wife. I 
say six years; Freshman year he had been busy 
studying, having an idea that he was destined to^ 
be a scholar and bring renown to the family 
name. So he had given little attention to the 
girls. The ideals of his Sophomore year had 
been quite the opposite of his Freshman hopes 
and ambitions. He was usually to be found close 
behind the burning end of a cigarette, and he 
made himself beheve that he liked to hear people 
say he was drinking extensively and was getting 
to be a first-class sport, who never studied, but 
who managed to crib his way up to the passing 
mark. 

The summer after Sophomore year Ned had 
spent at home. During those weeks he came to 
realize more than ever before how honorable and 
upright his father was, and how highly respected 
by all his associates. The ideas of his mother, 
which before had seemed narrow and prejudiced, 
somehow took on a new dignity and worth, and 
because he was still, at heart, an honest and 
thoughtful fellow, he was forced to admit that 
she was not so mistaken as he had grown to im- 
agine her. Right here his years of early train- 
ing made themselves felt, and because his Sopho- 



I o8 AJV A MHER ST BOOK. 

more ideal was not good enough, he had, after 
a brief struggle, cast it aside. 

So when he went back to college to begin his 
third year he was thinking very seriously of the 
'' after college." This was quite natural, for he 
Tiad just turned twenty-one. He could see plain- 
ly that he had been going the wrong way, and he 
was strengthened in his determination to get 
started again. 

Ned had always been a favorite with the girls, 
and among them he numbered many good 
friends. After he began to look more ear- 
nestly at life, he measured each one in the Hght 
of the future. He had never been conscious of 
having any ideal for a wife, but now he found 
the ideal already formed. Judged by this stand- 
ard all his girl friends were lacking, though one 
or two had come very near meeting its require- 
ments. There was Miss Branton — he had met 
lier in spring term of Senior year, and she 
possessed so many of the essential qualifications 
that for a time he almost believed she was the 
destined girl. But soon he noticed that her con- 
duct and conversation were superficial. She was 
vivacious and entertaining, but he could not re- 
member a single serious talk they had ever had 
together, nor a single lofty ambition which she 
had strengthened in him. So she would not do. 
Then there was Agnes Waverton — a very su- 
perior girl. But the fact that he had known her 
from boyhood made it impossible for him to love 



AN UNFINISHED STORY. 109 

her. He forgot that she was a woman; he re- 
membered her as a girl, and as such she was de- 
ficient. 

F'rom that time on he had applied the test to 
every new girl he met — not that he was in a 
hurry to choose, but under the circumstances this 
examination seemed the only natural thing. 

During those six years he had dreamed much 
of what the home should be. In all the dream- 
pictures, he saw, sitting just across the table from 
himself, or beside him at the fire, a happy, moth- 
erly woman — the real joy of the home. He could 
not tell the color of her eyes or hair — those were 
tmessential — and he never wondered as to her 
name, but he always saw the qualities which his 
ideal demanded. She was cultured, of a fine, 
sympathetic nature, and a woman who made lit- 
tle commotion or trouble about her duties. As 
to his children, he always pictured two in his 
mind. The boy was the older — a big, jolly, 
warm-hearted fellow; at college a fair student and 
an excellent football player. He had about de- 
cided to name him Tom — Tom was so honest 
and unconventional. The daughter was two 
years younger — tall and beautiful, and rather 
moderate, with a cool business head. And he 
pictured them both coming home from college 
for a Christmas ; Tom just getting over a sprained 
knee ; the daughter talking about the latest novel 
and begging Papa to take her to the newest 
opera. 



AN UNFINISHED STORY. iii 

This was his condition, matrimonially speak- 
ing, when he met Margaret Stanton. At first 
she had seemed like the hundred other girls he 
knew. As he came to know her better, however, 
he found so many of the characteristics for which 
he had been looking that her acquaintance be- 
came very pleasant. She did not attain to the full 
measure of his standard, but he was sure that 
he saw no traits in her which denoted tenden- 
cies that were contrary to his ideals. The ac- 
quaintance grew to intimacy. Rumor whispered 
an engagement, and though this was not true, he 
had about decided that it ought to be. The wo- 
man whose face he had so often seen in his 
dreams was now a creature of flesh and blood. 
She seemed more beautiful than any other wo- 
man. All his dreams were now to be realized. 

Margaret's mother had invited Ned to dine 
with them, and he had accepted with an end in 
view. He knew that the old people would linger 
for a while after dinner and then leave them to 
themselves, and that was to be the time. 

Ned had never before so enjoyed a dinner. 
Her father and mother had always been cordial 
to him, but they seemed unusually so that even- 
ing, and her bright, beautiful face just across 
the table from him woke the fond dreams of his 
own home. His hopes were raised and his de- 
termination strengthened. 

The expected transpired. After dinner her 
father said that a case in court on the morrow de~ 



112 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

nianded his attention for the evening, and callers 
summoned her mother to another room. The 
talk turned to people they knew, and he said : 

" I met Miss Lincoln driving this afternoon. 
She's a charming young woman and everybody 
speaks very highly of her, too." 

" Well, I have my opinion of Mary Lincoln, 
and I can't say that I agree with everybody," 
she replied, and her cheeks flushed. , 

He was startled by this quick and spirited re- 
tort, and hoping that he had misunderstood, he 
asked, "What did you say?" When she re- 
peated the words and he saw the same look in 
her face he was much displeased. 

If college and business had taught him any- 
thing it was to be guarded in expressing his opin- 
ions about others. One of his ideals for his wife 
had been that she must be fair in her judgments. 
He could not understand why Margaret — he al- 
ways thought of her as Margaret now — should 
speak thus of Miss Lincoln, when every one else 
had only good words for her. Was she so nar- 
row that some little personal disagreement would 
cause her to retain ill feelings? No, he could 
not believe that. Then was there some real rea- 
son why she should speak as she had? Was he 
mistaken about Miss Lincoln? He was loath also 
to believe that. His mother thought Miss Lin- 
coln almost perfect; indeed, she had more than 
once said to him that Mary would make a lovely 
wife for some man. Pie had never thought of her 



AN UNFINISHED STORY. 113 

in that light, but because he respected her so 
much he was pained to hear any insinuations 
against her. 

As they talked about other things many 
thoughts of the incident passed quickly through 
his mind, and now, as he looked up, he noticed — 
or thought he noticed — that Margaret did not 
appear quite as beautiful as she had at dinner. 
They talked for an hour, and he concluded to 
put off that other business until some future 
time. Not that he did not love Margaret as 
much as ever, but somehow he did not feel in 
just the right humor. So when the clock struck 
nine he left his good-night for her mother, and 
the door closed, and he was walking down the 
avenue. 

Upon reaching the corner he turned and saw 
the light in the window. Then, as he went on, 
he thought of the old dreams; he saw the home 
again, and by the fireside sat Margaret — was it 
Margaret? Somehow the face was not quite as 
distinct as it had been, and yet it must be she. 

As he crossed the avenue he looked back 
again. He was not sure whether it was Mar- 
garet's face at the fireside, but just then he 
thought of her goodness and beauty. Why, of 
course it was she! Of course he loved her! 
Nevertheless the face at the fireside was not so 
distinct as he wished it were, though he thought 
it was hers; but he was not quite sure. 

Charles Amos Andrews, '95. 



AMHERST SERENADE. 



G B. Churchill, '8q. 



Tod B. Galloway, '85. 



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It is confidently believed that Sabrina has sur- 
vived all the indignities of her strange and check- 
ered career, and reached that high station to 
which her divine nature entitles her. We see now 
that her vicissitudes were due to the fact that 
she was not understood. She was compelled,, 
through no fault of her own, to act out of char- 
acter. Whether in shadowy legend or in more 
tangible bronze, it is Sabrina's evident vocation 
to be a guardian divinity; why else was her pro- 
totype drowned in the river Severn except tO' 
become thenceforth a nymph and a myth, and 
as such the protectress of all that region? 

Before our Sabrina was drowned — this time,, 
alas, for our prosaic age, not in a historic river^ 
but in the College well — her ideas how to set up 
in the divinity business were very vague, and the 
whole spirit of our modern time was against her, 
though she did her best. Her first handicap was 
the gross unappreciativeness of men. The hon- 
ored benefactor who gave her to the College, Mr. 
Joel Hayden, kindly but mistakenly deemed that 
her vocation was to occupy a pedestal on the 
campus, a vulgar show for all sorts of rude gazers 
to see. Naturally enough, the life of a goddess 
in such a position could not run smoothly. For 




SABRINA. 
(As she presided over " The Garden.''^ 



SABRINA. 119 

one thing, she was dressed too cool to endure 
the rigors of a New England climate; that any 
one ought to have known. It was pathetic to see 
how from time to time she would cover her shiv- 
ering shoulders with shawls and wraps, and how 
when these were not forthcoming, often her only 
coat would be a coat of paint. Once with a loy- 
alty truly touching she encased her shapely but 
freezing limbs with striped stockings of the Am- 
herst purple-and-white. This revealed how deep- 
ly she responded to college sentiment; and that 
she shared in college sorrows, too, was evident 
when, after some athletic defeat, she would hide 
her chagrin by burying herself to the neck in the 
ground, or plunging head first into a barrel of 
tar. 

All this, though it revealed her sympathizing 
heart, was far enough from being a gracious and 
protecting goddess, and, indeed, for many years 
the nearest approach she could make to that vo- 
cation was as a kind of wet-nurse, in which char- 
acter she was found one morning holding a rag 
baby labeled '81. This piteous display of her ten- 
derness, however, had its reward. To the class oi 
'82 belongs the distinction of first recognizing 
something of her exalted nature; and, leaving her 
bleak station on the campus, at their solicitation, 
she graced their class banquet in New London, 
though, it is feared, more as honorary classmate 
than as divinity. 

In fact, she was neither nymph nor myth as 



I20 A A' AMHERST BOOK. 

yet, and on her return from New London she suf- 
fered worse insults than ever. Then came the 
drowning and the long season of gloom in Col- 
lege well; afterward, when her destruction was 
decreed, a period of hiding and refuge in the 
merciful Professor Charlie's barn; at some time, 
also, it is not known exactly when, several years 
of burial under a townsman's doorstep, until he 
sent to the College treasurer, saying: " Come 
and get your goddess." All this, as we now see, 
was merely her necessary training. Like her 
prototype, she had to be drowned in order to en- 
ter the nymph state, and, as Lord Bacon says. 
" it is by indignities that men (and perhaps 
nymphs also) come to dignities." At any rate, 
having survived all these experiences, she has 
reached the exalted station wherein she is at 
once a divinity and a myth; appearing on earth 
at rare intervals, in such gracious guise as to 
rouse the most enthusiastic class spirit, then van- 
ishing, her very existence a problem, her where- 
abouts, if she has any, known perhaps only to a 
few, or even one favored devotee. 

As a myth, too, she has thus far fulfilled all the 
requirements nobly. Matter-of-fact people will 
tell you that she was discovered and apotheosized 
by '88, by them handed down to '90, from whom 
she was stolen by '91. They will even tell the 
story how a drayman, leaving her only a minute 
carelessly while he went into the house to ^^\ 
his overcoat, found, to his dismay, on returning. 



SABRINA. 121 

that the occupants of a buggy whisking by had 
abstracted her in a twinkHng from his wagon 
and were off to the woods. That night the ban- 
queters of '90 had to dispense with her benign 
presence. From '91 she was duly inherited by 
'93, only to be stolen again by watchful members 
of '94. Ever since then, in fact, she has been 
" stolen property," subject every year to legal 
demands and prying detectives, and writs of re- 
plevin have followed her to this day. This is 
the way her history looks to prosaic eyes; but 
when it is said that a goddess and a full-fledged 
myth submits to so ignoble a fate as to be stolen 
we ought by this time to know how to interpret 
it. 

The subsequent history of Sabrina is just that 
baffling mixture of fancy and fact, of poetry and 
prose, that characterizes every myth. After a 
little flash of her divinity at the banquet of '94 
she vanished, and rested a whole year, the pros- 
ers say, in a cold-storage warehouse in Boston. 
It was a year of acute rivalry between '95 and 
'96 as to who should ultimately possess her. 
When '96, who had the promise of her presence 
at their Freshman banquet, surmounted the 
strenuous efforts of '95 to prevent their going, 
and were started for Greenfield, their train was 
boarded by a number of Sophomores, who, how- 
ever, were foiled when the classes changed cars 
and were sent off in the wrong direction. Dis- 
covering their mistake and arriving at Greenfield 



122 ^A^ AMHERST BOOK. 

too late for the banquet, these men of '95 ob- 
tained a search-warrant, cHmbed up by ladders to 
a roof, whence they could look into the ban- 
quet room, and were sure that the ice canister at 
the head of the table was Sabrina. They were 
wrong; Sabrina never was at Greenfield. It is a 
very comfortable thing, sometimes, to be a myth. • 

At the Sophomore banquet, however, which 
was held in Nashua, Sabrina beamed upon the 
class of '96 in all her glory — for forty rapturous 
minutes. Then she disappeared, to seek her fit- 
ting sphere; though the prosaist steps in again 
here with his trumpery story of a dray rumbling 
ofif to the town of Mason in the middle of a zero 
night, with seven hundred pounds of bronze 
statue, and reaching its destination at half-past 
six in the morning. That same unimaginative 
historian would doubtless tell you that she had 
come from Boston to Nashua packed as sleight- 
of-hand utensils belonging to Comical Brown. 
Nay, he would go still further back and tell you 
that, on account of the watchfulness of '95 and 
a reward offered by the American Express Com- 
pany, her retreat in the cold-storage warehouse 
had some time before become very insecure, and 
that, evading her keen pursuers by only a few 
hours, she had stowed herself away among the 
sausages of a sausage manufactory, from which 
place it was that she went to Nashua. Thus it is 
that the aerial journeys of a goddess appear to 
those whose souls lack poetry. She certainly will 



SABRINA. 123 

never be less a myth to those who accept the 
sausage theory. 

At Mason, so the prosaic history runs, she 
rested three days in a grape cellar. Then one 
night, the proprietor of the cellar never knew 
how, she disappeared, and thereafter rested long 
and securely in an attic away off in another part 
of the town. It was while she was here that the 
proverbial " woman in the case " disturbed her 
security again and caused her once more to take 
flight. As two Amherst class presidents hap- 
pened to be talking with a Smith student, at a 
reception in Northampton, the young lady as- 
serted with the utmost assurance that she knew 
of Sabrina's whereabouts, and for a wonder 
named the exact place. The way she had got at 
it, through an intricate labyrinth of college cor- 
respondents, best girls, fond mothers, and coun- 
try sewing circles, none of whom knew the real 
truth of the matter, betrayed powers of con- 
jecture and inference worthy of Sherlock Holmes 
himself. And the information happened to be 
just what one of the class presidents knew and 
the other was eagerly in search of. So Sabrina 
must flee again, this time to rest well guarded, 
though subject still to keen detective inquiries, 
in a little town of Western New York. Here it 
w^as comparatively easy to evade the watchful 
eyes of '97, and when it came time for '98 to in- 
herit her presence, an elderly business man, who 
was much accustomed to transport machinery, 



124 



AN AMHERST BOOK 



could very conveniently take her to a spot 
whence she could be transferred to the next class 
supper. 

Sabrina's latest appearance on earth was in 
January, 1896, at the Sophomore class banquet 
in Bennington, Vermont. She seems destined 
now to manifest her favor to the even-numbered 
classes, though no one can forecast the future. 
And ever. since her bath in the College well in- 
ducted her, like the maid of the Severn, into 
nymphhood, she has, with the years, grown more 
mysterious, more mythical. Where is Sabrina? 
is still the unanswered question ; a question round 
which cluster more rumors and rivalries, more 
fancies and schemes and class enthusiasms than 
attach to any other college topic. 

Chari.es J. Staples, '96, 
and John F. Genung. 



fm 




THE MONUMENT OE RIGHT. 

Shout the joys of Hfe, ye Moderns! 

Shout the joys of Hfe to-day! 
When the world is full of progress, 

Peaceful in the breath of May. 

Shout that as mankind advances 

Out of darkness into light, 
You may carve another motto 

On the monument of right! 

Chiseled first by Grecian freedom. 

Then by Roman equity. 
Soon it spoke in living emblems 

Dyed for conscience-liberty. 

Now it towers in simple grandeur, 
Splendid with the light of age, 

Mottoed by a hundred precepts, 
Thrilled with mighty justice-rage. 

Still behold one markless surface. 
Near the column's haloed head; 

There inscribe this sacred maxim, 
Which shall live till right is dead: 

^' Wealth is only accidental 

Standing not for highest worth; 

Man is man if he has manhood, 
Spite of fortune, skill or birth! " 

William L. Corbin, '96. 





o 
o 



AyV\HER5T IN 1575. 

The accompanying cut of the college build- 
ings reproduces a photograph taken in 1875 fi'oni 
the roof of the Library. The two buildings ac- 
quired since i860 both appear — Walker Hill on 
the left and the College Church, showing its spire 
just above the end of East College. 

The fund for the erection of Walker Hall was 
established by Dr. W. G. Walker, of Charlestown. 
In order to provide a suitable site for the pro- 
posed building, the Boltwood estate, a strip oi 
land on the north side of the college grounds, 
was purchased. The cornerstone was laid in 
1863, but not until 1870 was the building com- 
pleted. The material was Monson granite, 
trimmed with brown sandstone, and the archi- 
tecture was that known as the revised mediaeval. 
The building was by far the most magnificent 
structure the College boasted, having cost nearly 
as much as the aggregate of all the other build- 
ings erected up to that time. The departments 
of mathematics, physics, astronomy and min- 
eralogy found quarters there, besides the offices 
of the President, treasurer, registrar, and college 
pastor. The Shepard collection of minerals, 
among the most valuable in the country, oc- 
cupied the entire third floor. At about the time 



I2S AN AMHERST BOOK. 

of the erection of Walker Hall a large sum, near- 
ly equal to the original cost of the building, was 
spent in making needed repairs in the chapel. 
The only evidence of this that appears in the pic- 
ture is the railing on top of the tower, which re- 
placed the old decoration. 

In 1867 the trustees purchased the abandoned 
meeting-house of the First Congregational 
Church, — the second building owned by the so- 
ciety, — and rebuilt it into College Hall. Tradi- 
tion says the remodelling took awa}^ much of its 
ugliness. We wonder, but are not tempted to 
imagine, what it could have looked like in the 
original. 

The College Church was completed at about 
the time of the semi-centennial. The edifice em- 
bodied the idea that the College might " hold the 
religious services of the Sabbath, as other 
churches do, in a retired, consecrated Sabbath 
home, from which all the studies and distractions 
of the week should be excluded, and where the 
suggestions of the place should assist us to gather 
in our thoughts, and in the enjoyment of sacred 
silence to confer with God." The chief donor 
was the late William F. Stearns, son of President 
Stearns. For a long time the selection of the 
proper site for the new building was a very per- 
plexing question. The trustees finally accepted 
the unanimous advice of architects and profes- 
sional landscape gardeners, and chose the spot 
at the eastern edge of the campus, just behind 



AMHERST IN 1875. 129 

East College. When the old dormitory was de- 
molished later the beautiful church stood forth 
on its eminence, a testimonial to the wisdom of 
the advice given and accepted. Any one who 
has ever attended an open-air vesper service held 
on the green knoll in the rear of the church ap- 
preciates the choice of location. It is the most 
beautiful spot m our beautiful Amherst. Across 
the green valley, dotted with white farmhouses, 
rise the gently-rolling Pelham Hills, ever chang- 
ing in color — green or golden, purple or ruddy — 
according to the season and the magic touch of 
the sun. And the quiet of the place is perfect. 
The note of a bird or the rustle of the leaves 
alone breaks the Sabbath stillness, and even the 
birds and breezes seem to have a tone of rever- 
ence. : I ! 

Edward Ci.ark Hood, '97. 





JULIUS HAWLEY SEELYE. 



JULIUS HSWLEY SCELYE. 

Colleges change. College presidents change 
with them. The heads of our larger institutions of 
learning were once selected because they were 
scholars. They are chosen to-day because they 
are men of affairs, or believed to be such. They 
were once expected to attract students. They 
are now expected to attract endowments. When 
President Seelye resigned, in 1890, he was well 
nigh the only man at the head of an institution 
as large as Amherst College who owed his rela- 
tion primarily to his eminence as a scholar and 
his intellectual power as an original thinker, 
rather than to his ability as a man of affairs. 
Man of affairs he was, but death found him in 
many senses, perhaps in all, the last of that great 
line of clerical educators, who, from Jonathan 
Edwards, in the middle of the last century, to 
Mark Hopkins, in the middle of this century, 
have molded the ideals, the intellection and the 
education of New England and the country. 

President Seelye had all the strength and many 
of the limitations of the men of this mighty suc- 
cession. Its share in developing the higher 
thought of the American people will be better 
appreciated a century hence than it is likely to be 
to-day, when new demands have made new en- 
dowments the first need of colleges and their 



132 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

material prosperity the popular measure of their 
success. Educated in Germany while Kant and 
Hegel still reigned supreme, President Seelye 
represented in the luminous and stimulating 
teaching, which he gave to successive classes for 
thirty years, a transcendental idealism, which was 
the natural outcome of the adaptation of the 
Kantian philosophy to the needs and thought 
of men trained in the stricter traditions of New 
England theology. 

But with men like President Seelye, as with 
his predecessors in the same field and work, his 
precise explanation and teaching were of far less 
consequence than the man and his message. The 
method of metaphysics will vary with every age. 
In the interpretation of life every teacher, and in 
the end every man, must choose between the 
assertion of the spiritual and unseen as ultimate 
law and guide, or the acceptance of the known, 
the recorded and the undemonstrated as map- 
ping and environing all of life. It was the high 
and extraordinary mission of President Seelye, 
in a day and generation when the whirl and clat- 
ter of scientific discovery induced other currents 
and other tendencies, to assert with unfaltering- 
trust and unshaken belief the conviction that the 
dominant impulse and development of humanity 
made for things spiritual, unseen and eternal. 

No man can do more for his day than this. It 
fell to President Seelye to stand in many hu- 
man relations. He was seventeen years professor 



JULIUS HA IV LE V SEEL YE. 133 

and thirteen president. He served in Congress 
with distinction, and showed there supreme de- 
votion to principle as he conceived it. His pub- 
Hshed works played each its important part in 
its own field. In his term as president he doub- 
led the endowment of Amherst. He originated 
a new method of college discipline by an appeal 
to honor and self-government, which has been 
widely miitated and has in all institutions modi- 
fied old methods. 

But his real work was in the class-room. There 
he awoke impulse and conviction that lasted 
through life. His pupils, scattered in life's work 
in cities, in country manses and offtces, in solitary 
mission stations, think not of his honors and 
offices, of his books or his fame. There rises be- 
fore them the gaunt figure of the man, his sub- 
tle, earnest and illumined face, and they hear 
once more his deep inspiring voice pleading in 
the Babel of the world's duties — conflicting, con- 
fusing and constraining — for the still small voice 
of the Spirit, for a supreme allegiance to the 
sense of duty which is from everlasting to ever- 
lasting, and for a serene confidence that for the 
righteous it shall be ever and always well, be- 
cause in a righteous hand are all things ordered 
and uplifted.* 

Talcott Williams, ''j-':). 



*Reprinted, with revision, from fhe Philadelphia 
Press of May 14, 1895. 



PEANUT JOHN. 

For the most part, peanut venders are rather a 
dry lot. Whatever savor they bring of clear 
skies, and sunny lands, and historic rivers, seems 
starved and mummified by the eternal conscious- 
ness of the scramble for existence. One, indeed, 
I knew, with his red stand on the dusty corner of 
a city street, who tried with cheery patience to 
teach my juvenile wits how to read his Italian 
newspaper. But such as he are rare enough; 
they stand on an eminence apart from all their 
kind, and chief among them, for all that makes 
simple manhood, is " Peanut John " Musante. 

To see his slow, lumbering, though not exactly 
dignified gait, as he wanders about town, or to 
watch him as he sits in his " store," sleepily turn- 
ing the crank of his peanut-roaster, to the dron- 
ing accompaniment of an accordion, playing Ital- 
ian airs, one would think him the personification 
of repose — the antithesis of our American spirit 
of hurry. But in the presence oi a champion- 
ship game — what a transfonnation! All the 
phlegmatic inertness vanishes. Not a Freshman 
watches the play more eagerly, not a man cheers 
louder, or throws his hat higher than Peanut 
John. 

Fourteen years have passed since John came to 




PEANUT JOHN. 



136 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

Amherst, and his conquest of the student heart 
was long ago complete. His monopoly of the 
peanut business is absolute. He still occupies 
the little, underground basement that he rented 
when he came to town — now, as always, half 
filled with empty orange crates and big sacks 
of peanuts. The idea of progress, with its bale- 
ful discontent, has never troubled his tranquil 
existence. I fear John knows nothing at all 
about the grim laws of competition. Observe the 
extra handful of peanuts that goes into your 
pocket with every nickel's worth you buy. Note 
the orange thrown in with each purchase by a 
student acquaintance, and then know one reason 
why John's business has not outgrown its mod- 
est accommodations, but know also the reason 
for John's monopoly, and for his hold on the Am- 
herst heart. There is a story that once a com- 
mon " Dago " came up from New York, set up 
a stand and tried to undersell him, but the boys 
rallied around John, refused his rival admittance 
to the big games, and at length forced the in- 
truder to depart, after a brief, boycotted exist- 
ence. 

Nothing pleases John better tb.an to have a 
student drop in of an evening for a little chat. 
He is always full of talk about Italy. A patriotic 
son of Genoa, and a fellow-townsman of Colum- 
bus, he is proud of his birthplace, and ready any 
time to throw up his hat for the glory of the 
fatherland. Nevertheless, his praise is not al- 



PEANUT JOHN. 137 

together an unmixed and indiscriminate hyper- 
bole. He admits that Italy has one drawback. 

" It's all right," he told me with great earnest- 
ness. " Goota place, goota land, goota people — 
all goot — but," and his voice dropped to a con- 
fidential note, " worka like a jackass!" 

" They not pay 'nough," he explained. " Work 
all day; get twenta-five — thirta cent! You geta 
shoe, geta pant, geta coat, geta shirt — all gone! 
Nothin' to eat ! Then you geta fam'ly — " but the 
situation was beyond the powers of John's Eng- 
lish, and he supplied the ellipsis with a graphic 
wave of his hand. 

When John went tO' be photographed, he in- 
sisted, in spite of most urgent remonstrances, 
on wearing a white shirt and starched collar in 
place of the old, familiar black sweater. With 
this single exception the accompanying picture of 
him and his basket of peanuts is thoroughly 
characteristic. It is no mean advantage of tar- 
rying four years in this little bubbling back- 
water from the high seas of life, that sometimes 
we eddy intO' contact with souls so simple and 
honest and unselfish as " Peanut John " Mu- 
sante — upon whom we hereby confer the degree 
of " Nature's Gentleman." 

Archibald L. Bouton, '96. 



HER LIGHT GUITAR. 

Her light guitar she softly plays, 
With the sweetest witching little ways 
Of smiling at me, as I lie 
Admiring her, and vainly try 
To still the heart her beauty sways. 

Her graceful form the fire's red rays 
Encircle with a maddening maze 
Of mellow light — the red flames dye 
Her light guitar! 

I would I knew a lover's lays 

To sing her now, while glad she stays 

Her song to make me soft reply; 

I rave — for riches, love and I 
Uncared for are, whene'er she plays. 
Her light guitar ! 

L. C. Stone, '96. 



THE MEASURE OE S MAN. 

Popularity with the swell set in college, like ul- 
tra-fashionable society in New York, " is a para- 
dise, at least to the extent of having an angel 
with flaming sword to guard its entrance." Some- 
times it is to good looks and an amiable dispo- 
sition that this sword is lowered; sometimes to 
intellect; more often to athletic ability; occa- 
sionally, it must be admitted, it is lowered, but 
never obsequiously, to the shining taUsman of 
riches. 

Now, Arthur Woodbury represented these 
four things. He was rich, he was clever, he had 
a prepossessing appearance, and he could run a 
certain distance upon the cinder track in several 
seconds less time than any other man in col- 
lege. In consideration of these qualifications, as 
he advanced in his course, he was taken up with 
enthusiasm by the college swells, and was at 
length received into that inner circle of the elect 
whose badge of membership makes it possible for 
a Senior to dress like a " poco " and behave like 
a Bowery " gent," if he cares, and still retain an 
unquestioned social pre-eminence. Woodbury, 
however, did neither of these things. On the 
contrary, his taste in clothes was so fastidious 
and his habitual demeanor so reserved and cor- 



THE MEASURE OF A MAN. 141 

Tect that his fellows came to regard him as a 
sort of embryo Chesterfieldo His physical cour- 
age and strong mental character being undenia- 
ble, this could not be scored as a point against 
him. Rather, it increased the nameless fascina- 
tion which he held for all of his acquaintances. 
He was a man with a liking for the society of 
ladies, and naturally enough was immensely pop- 
ular with them. There was a quality in his looks, 
his speech and his manner which could not but 
impress a girl; something conspicuous and nat- 
urally eminent, which invested his most trifling 
word and act with the stamp of his personality. 
He was strong and lithe and masculine, and his 
iine, serious eyes had a very compelling glance. 
It followed inevitably that he should become a 
favorite in feminine circles. But he was not open 
to the charge of being a mere gay Lothario; his 
solid qualities were too prominent for that. His 
•enemies — he had a few of them, as all men of 
strong characters must have — found him a hard 
man to pick flaws in. One or two youths, who 
resented his exclusiveness, were accustomed to 
say his chief fault was that he had none of the 
palpable human weaknesses which were always 
cropping out in his fellows. " His virtues pall 
upon me," one young man complained. " They ir- 
ritate me. Everything he does is so altogether 
suitable and desirable. He is absolutely self-cen- 
tered. He never could have schooled himself 
to be what he is without too much care. His 



142 AA^ AMHERST BOOK. 

very simplicity is the highest art. He never re- 
fers to himself or his opinion, but in order not to 
he is obliged never to forget himself one single 
minute." 

These few detracting tongues, however, 
wagged harmlessly enough. The object of their 
dislike was too firmly seated in the universal re- 
gard to be affected by them. 

At the time when Woodbury became a Senioi 
at Amity, a young man named Bagley entered 
the Freshman class. As it happened, the two 
were old acquaintances. They hailed from the 
same town, where Woodbury's father owned a 
large manufacturing business, and Bagley's 
father was the local physician. The families had 
been somewhat intimate, and it naturally hap- 
pened that when the eldest scion of the one went 
away to college the sole member of his genera- 
tion in the other took a deep interest in following 
the incidents in his career. From time to time 
news came to the village of Woodbury's success; 
he had made the athletic team; he was singing 
on the glee club; he had received a term mark 
of four. When at length Bagley himself went up 
to college, his old acquaintances had become a 
person of such prominence that the Freshman 
was conscious of a vague feeling of excitemxcnt 
at the prospect of meeting him once more. They 
had not seen each other in two years, both hav- 
ing been absent from town during the vacations, 

Their first encounter took place about a week 



THE MEASURE OF A MAN. 143 

after the opening of the term. Bagley reahzed 
when it was over that Woodbury was not glad 
to see him at Amity. Strange as it may seem, 
after his first pangs of wounded pride at this dis- 
covery were past, he did not harbor any lasting 
feeling of bitterness against the Senior. He had 
too low an estimate of his own qualities, and too 
high a one of Woodbury's to feel that intimacy 
could naturally exist between them except by the 
latter's gracious condescension. Who was he 
that the great man should make him his friend? 
They had known each other in former days, to 
be sure, but that fact, unless backed by present 
worth and fitness on his part, did not constitute 
for him a valid claim to Woodbury's regard. " If 
I were in his place, and he in mine," Bagley rea- 
soned, with a humility possible only to a Fresh- 
man dazzled by the unique lustre of an upper- 
class hero, " I know I should feel exactly as he 
does." 

But if the Freshman was frank enough to ad- 
mit to himself that he was a person of small im- 
portance, he w^as by no means so weak as to be 
willing to remain one. Deep in his heart he har- 
bored an ambition and a determination which 
thrilled his whole being with their intensity. He 
would yet prove himself worthy of the consid- 
eration now refused him. He would show Wood- 
bury — yes, and the whole College! — that there 
were in him the possibilities of a strong man, if 
not of a brilliant one. To make the most of everv 



144 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

least quality and ability which he possessed — that 
was the purpose which filled him. 

In the endeavor to carry out this determina- 
tion he tried for the glee club, and missed it. 
His voice was a very ordinary one. Then he 
came out and played football on the second 
eleven. He had no possibility of development 
as a player, but nobody cared enough about him 
or his ambitions to tell him so. Day after day 
he turned out in his torn and bloody uniform, 
and was batted about and knocked down and 
trampled upon until his body was a pitiful mass 
of bruises. All this he endured with the most 
persistent cheerfulness and patience, in the mis- 
taken belief that he was laying the foundation for 
pre-eminence in football during the later years 
of his course. 

When the season was over he devoted himeslf 
to study. He purchased an alarm clock, and by 
its aid cheated himself every morning of several 
hours of necessary sleep. At night his lamp was 
almost invariably the last one in the dormitory 
to be extinguished. The results of this unnatural 
expenditure of energy were meagre in the ex- 
treme. He had no genius for books; there was 
nothing of the scholar about him. He consoled 
himself, however, with the reflection that his 
failure was due in part to a poor fit, and when 
spring term opened he renewed the uneven strug- 
gle and the drain upon his health without the 
slightest abatement of courage or determination. 



146 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

Meanwhile, he did not cease to regard Wood- 
bury as his pattern of perfection, his ideal of all 
that a college man should be. His interest in 
the Senior was continually making itself mani- 
fest to others. He betrayed it in the lecture 
room, during those recitations at which members 
of all the classes were present, by the cat-like per- 
sistency with which he watched Woodbury's 
every movement. During the track athletic sea- 
son he made frequent visits to the field and saw 
Woodbury do his daily turn upon the cinder 
path, secretly taking his time, whenever possible, 
with a stronger solicitude for his progress and 
final success than the runner himself could have 
felt. Junior Prom, night he bought a ticket to 
the gymnasium gallery, inspired thereto chiefly 
by the knowledge that his hero was to be upon 
the floor. He experienced a positive thrill of de- 
light when he heard several upper-class men near 
him declare that the girl whom Woodbury had 
brought was the " stunner " of the occasion. He 
could not have been more glad if he had brought 
her himself. 

On a warm June morning, at one of the 
"finals," Bagley occupied a chair of¥ the center 
aisle of the recitation-room. Woodbury hap- 
pened to sit directly opposite. For more than 
an hour, while wrestling with the questions be- 
fore him, the Freshman remained oblivious of all 
that was going on in the room. But suddenly, 
as he gazed meditatively at the back of the man 



THE MEASURE OF A MAN. 147 

ill front of him, he heard a sound resembhng a 
gasp from some one on his right. He turned 
his head just in time to see a bit of white paper 
flutter softly down to the floor in the middle of 
the aisle. It was all written over with a fine, reg- 
ular penmanship. Bagley perceived this, and at 
once understood the meaning of the sound he 
had heard. The paper was a crib, and it had es- 
caped from Woodbury's hand. 

Numberless thoughts went through the Fresh- 
man's brain in an instant of time. Then the in- 
structor, who had not seen the paper fall, turned 
his head and caught sight of it. As he rose and 
walked slowly down the aisle the students looked 
up at him expectantly. Bagley alone had wit- 
nessed the accident, and the others did not know 
what was to follow. 

The instructor stooped and raised the paper 
from the floor. " Whose is this? " he demanded. 
Bagley glanced at Woodbury. The Senior's face 
was white as chalk. For a moment the room was 
so still that the Freshman thought he could hear 
his heart beat. It seemed to him that he did a 
year's thinking in that period of awful silence. 

" Whose is this, I ask?" the instructor repeat- 
ed. 

Then, to the intense astonishment of every man 
in the room, the religious Bagley leaned for- 
ward and said very slowly and distinctly: " It 
belongs to me. I dropped it." 

Woodburv made a convulsive movement and 



148 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

Opened his mouth to speak, but the words died 
in his throat. 

Then, with every eye upon him, Bagley rose 
and left the class-room. Immediately Woodbury 
pulled himself to his feet and went after him. 
The two met in the hall. 

" What did you do that for? " asked the Senior, 
falteringly. 

Bagley's head whirled with the tumult that was 
going on in his brain, and he answered steadily 
enough: *' I did it for a good many reasons. I 
thought of 'em all while he stood there with the 
paper in his hand. Expulsion means everything 
to you, and it doesn't mean much of anything to 
me; and since I had a chance to do you a very 
great service at a very small cost to myself, why, 
I was glad to take it; that's all." 

" But it wasn't called for," said Woodbury. 
" He didn't see the paper fall, and he couldn't 
have found out that it was mine." 

"Yes, he could!" said the Freshman. "He 
knew it belonged to some of us fellows near the 
aisle, and your handwriting would have given 
you dead away. Now he won't think to examine 
it closely." 

" Well, I shan't let this thing go on! " said the 
Senior. " I'm going back to tell him that the 
crib was mine ! " 

"No, you're not!" exclaimed the Freshman, 
laying a detaining hand on the other's arm. 
"Just listen to me a minute!" Bagley began to 



THE MEASURE OF A MAN. 149 

talk very fast and very earnestly. " You're a 
Senior, and youVe been here a long time, and 
everybody knows about you and what a lot of 
fine things you've done here. You are just at the 
end of your course, and if this hadn't happened 
you'd have gone out very soon with a great name 
and brilliant prospects. Your mother will be up 
to see you graduate in a few days; it isn't neces- 
sary for me to say how she'd feel if she should 
hear about this. And I heard yesterday (excuse 
me for speaking about what is nobody's busi- 
ness but your own) that you are engaged, or just 
on the point of becoming so, to that girl whom 
you had over here to the Prom. I needn't tell 
you how she'd feel about it either. Now, as for 
me, I haven't any of these things to think about. 
I'm a Freshman, and only a few men in this 
whole College know me, and they will forget 
they ever saw me in three months' time. So the 
disgrace before the College won't mean anything 
to me. My mother has been dead two years; 
it can't trouble her. I never had any brothers 
or sisters, as you know, and there is no girl that 
I care about. There's only my father to hear it, 
and I can explain it to him. And next year I 
can enter somewhere else and go on just the same 
as before. Now, listen to reason, and don't ruin 
your prospects for life for a mere quibble about 
a point of honor! " 

Woodbury remained silent for a few moments 
after the other had ceased speaking. Then he 



I50 AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

held out his hand, and began to pour forth a 
stream of lavish encomiums upon the Freshman's 
generosity. 

Bagley cut him short. " That's all right," he 
said. " Don't give me too much credit. I would 
not do it if it cost me anything. We'd better get 
away from here now, before he comes out. He 
might ask me some inconvenient questions, and 
I'm not a very cheerful liar, to be frank." 

That evening, when the 6:15 train stopped at 
the Amity station, a single student boarded it, 
and was whirled away through the twilight. 
And the next day the faculty heard that Fresh- 
man Bagley had run like a coward from the 
consequences of his dishonorable act, and they 
voted that his name be dropped from the rolls of 
the College. 

It was about a week later that, by the merest 
accident, a Senior chanced to refer to Bagley 
in Woodbury's presence. 

" Bagley! " said he. " He came from your 
town, didn't he, Arthur? An acquaintance of 
yours, I suppose? Pretty poor sort of a stick, 
wasn't he? " 

" Well, he wasn't exactly a star," said Wood- 
bury. " I didn't know him very well." 

WORTHINGTON C. HOLMAN, '96. 



WITHIN HER KISS. 

Within her kiss was centered all delight, 

Within her arms nor hurt nor grief could mar; 
Her soul I found my own soul's home, where 
bar 
Nor screen might hide my thoughts from her 
clear sight. 

Across the seas I thought her love a light 
That dwelt serene above me like a star; 
I thought it led me homeward from afar; 

I came, and here I found her black as night. 

Only the cool-lipped blossoms kiss I now; 

I trust the loyalty of plant and stone; 
To passion-heated man I will not bow. 

Yet is chaste beauty wholly desert-grown? 
Can earthly clod a neighbor clod endow? 
Has bloom an innocency of its own? 

Robert P. St. John, '93. 



ACROSS THE RIVER. 

It is easy enough to go to Northampton now- 
adays; so easy, indeed, as to arouse misgivings 
in the hearts of people who regret the passing 
of the good old days. They are gone, in very 
truth! The " indigent, pious yoimg men " of the 
early catalogues seem to have disappeared. The 
Antivenenean is dead, Alexandria and Athenae 
have yielded to the law of natural selection, and 
the stage line to " Hamp." has been a matter of 
history these ten years. If we pay these departed 
institutions the tribute of a passing regret, it is 
in a Pickwickian sense, for we surely do not 
wish them back again. One may yield to senti- 
ment long enough to deplore the rude inter- 
ruption of Hadley's venerable drowsiness by the 
shriek of the steam whistle; but, after all, we do 
not care very much about Hadley, peaceful and 
picturesque as it is. Northampton in fifteen min- 
utes is the main consideration. 

It is hardly probable that the College would 
have welcomed the railroad as warmly as it did 
had it not been for Sophia Smith, of blessed 
memory, and the temperance proclivities of the 
good citizens of Amherst. With no lack of re- 
spect for the Edwards Church, Elm street and 
the social and literary traditions of Northampton, 



154 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

it must be said that Smith College divides with 
Dewey et al. the responsibility for the semi-week- 
ly exodus from Amherst. A due sense of the 
proprieties leads us to add, with all convenient 
haste, that by far the larger share of the load 
must be assumed by the college. 

It is a custom of the Eminent Person, when 
he visits Amherst, to congratulate us upon the 
fact that here in Hampshire County we have 
solved the problem of co-education. This is un- 
derstood to be a witticism on the part of the Emi- 
nent Person. But even the benevolent facetious- 
ness with which it is delivered fails to remove 
from the jest a certain clumsiness. Perhaps the 
individuals who are invited to the Geological Tea 
and the Colloquium duly appreciate it, but the 
truth is that the average undergraduate of Am- 
herst knows little, and perhaps cares less, about 
Smith as an educational institution. He takes 
his own education seriously enough in the class- 
room, turns it into a joke the minute he is out- 
side, and by the time he has bolted his dinner 
and is safely landed in the rear car of the " one- 
twenty," on his way to Hamp. he has forgotten 
all about it. The fact that Smith is an exponent 
of the higher education for women appeals to 
him chiefly as the cause of the conditions which 
surround the performance of ordinary social 
functions on the Campus. The high and serious 
aims of the College doubtless account for the 
gruesome saints which stare down at him from 



ACROSS THE RIVER. 155 

the walls in the college houses. Nowhere, except 
in a college community, would one be likely to 
find a member of the so-called " weaker sex " 
showing such an intimate and affectionate inter- 
est in small snakes and frogs as does the biolog- 
ical student with whom one is wooing the ma- 
larial pleasures of " Paradise." 

Between the schedule of the Massachusetts 
Central and the rules of the College, an evening 
call at Smith is likely to bear a certain distant 
resemblance to a quick lunch at a railroad res- 
taurant. If you do not have to depart uncere- 
moniously to catch the last train to Amherst, 
you are more than likely to be reminded, by an 
emphatic bell-ringing, that the " higher educa- 
tion " cannot get along without a ten o'clock rule. 
However, the inconveniences are few and the 
pleastires many. There are tennis tournaments. 
There is boating on Mill river — after a heavy 
rain. There are glee club concerts, and dra- 
matics, and afternoon teas, and occasionally — for 
a few favored mortals, it is said — there is a 
basketball game. With all these it is perhaps 
not surprising that there is little hope for a man 
who once acquires the Hamp. habit, a habit 
harmless and pleasant enough, except when it 
takes the form of a mania for carrying ominous- 
ly light suit-cases across the river, and bringing 
them back heavier by half than any respectable 
suit-case ought to be. Of course, the habit 
highly developed interferes with the close pursuit 



150 AA^ AMHERST BOOK. 

of the chief end of man — -P B K, first drawing. 
One cannot learn to make trains in spite of the 
Chapel clock, and also be a rank-stacker. More- 
over, the inveterate society man does not escape 
frequent trips to Northampton behind hired 
horses. Such trips are pleasant in the spring and 
early fall, endurable in the late fall and a part of 
the winter, and unspeakable the rest of the time. 
Also your livery bill is a grievous pest tO' the 
pocketbook. 

We should fare but poorly without Northamp- 
ton. There can the Freshman disport himself in 
the vain delusion that people do not know his 
humble state. There can the Junior display his 
latest from Staab's. There also can the thirsty 
soul quench his thirst. There professors cease 
from troubling, and their victims are at rest. 
May an overruling Providence strengthen the 
railroad bridge and hasten the hum of the trolley. 

Frank Edgerton Harkness, '96. 




NY LADY. 

I moved unheeding through the festal hall, 

Where men and maidens, circling in the dance, 
Would now retire, now two by two advance, 

Responsive to soft music's rise and fall. 

What though the lights gleamed bright above 
them all? 
What though their jewels flashed with every 

glance? 
Without my lady's gracious countenance 

All was a gloom, where I was held in thrall. 

When, lo ! she came, and as she moved along 
The splendor of her presence filled the place, 

And sent a silence through the careless throng; 
And from my heart the magic of her grace 
And spirit-beauty glowing in her face 

Banished the night, and made me calm and 
strong. 

George Breed Zug, '93. 



J ESN BCNOIT. 

Many years ago, Avhen a terrible pestilence 
was spreading throughout the center of France, 
there came to the town of Beauchamp a great 
and good man. Some of the townsfolk said he 
was a priest in disguise, who had come from 
Paris; others that he was a monk — one of the 
brothers from the time-scarred monastery on the 
hill. At any rate, whether priest or monk, his 
arrival seemed to be the work of God; for no 
sooner did he take up his abode among the 
stricken people than he began to do what he 
could to lessen their sufiferings. Wherever the 
deadly disease had found its way, there, like some 
ministering angel, he went, giving medicine and 
food to those that were poor or starving. En- 
couraged by his untiring zeal and noble self-sac- 
rifice the people forgot their terror, and fought 
the dreaded plague until at last it was overcome. 
And when the men arose from their beds and 
again went into the fields, with hardly a word 
to any one this much-beloved man silently dis- 
appeared, leaving behind only his name — Jean 
Benoit. 

For thirty years the name of Jean Benoit was 
upon everybody's Hps. People spoke of him as 
the Savior of their town. At religious services 



1 60 A AT A MHER ST BOOK. 

prayers were offered in remembrance of the work 
he had accompHshed. And when, at last, the 
Abbe Francois said, while dying, that he hoped 
a statue would soon be raised in honor of Jean 
Benoit, and that he had left some money for that 
purpose, to which additions ought to be made, 
the people heartily seconded his wish and gen- 
erously increased the Abbe's sum to large pro- 
portions. 

One morning, Philippe, the new cure, 
knocked at the door of Jules Ninon, the sculptor. 

" Jules," said the cure, as he seated himself 
at the window, " you remember Jean Benoit? " 

*' Monsieur le Cure! " exclaimed Jules in sur- 
prise, " did not Jean Benoit save my life when I 
was young? " 

"You recall his face, his figure, his dress?" 
inquired Philippe. 

'' Perfectly, Monsieur le Cure," answered the 
sculptor. 

" Could you carve him in marble, Jules? " 

'' Yes, Monsieur I'Abbe. I can see him now — 
a young man, tall and fair, his long, black coat 
falHng almost to his feet, his kind, handsome 
eyes, his — " 

" Jules you may begin work at once," inter- 
rupted the abbe. "How long will it take?" 

" I shall want a long time. Monsieur FAbbe. 
It must be my best work." 

" Very well, Jules. But let thy love for the 
man quicken thy hands," 



JEAN BENOIT. i6i 

The sculptor worked hard and earnestly. Day 
by day, under his skillful touch, the marble block 
changed its rough outlines to those of the bene- 
factor of thirty years before. To Jules Ninon 
it seemed as though the hours came and went with 
lightning rapidity. But one purpose was ever 
before him; to finish the statue, to show his 
townspeople that he could cause Jean Benoit 
again to be with them. As the click of his chisel 
sounded in his locked studio he thought how 
proud he would be to have his name forever as- 
sociated with that of the great man. Perhaps, 
in some little way, he, too, would be remembered 
by the men and women of Beauchamp. For 
would he not have given them the imperishable 
form of him whose name was ever in their minds? 

At last, on an evening in July, Jules laid down 
his chisel. "It is finished!" said he, and he 
stepped back to look at his work. Yes! he had 
done well It was Jean Benoit even as he had 
lived among the sufferers so many years ago. As 
the red rays of the setting sun stole through the 
studio window and lighted up the calm, saintly ^ 
face of the statue, it seemed to Jules Ninon, as he 
gazed enraptured at the idol of his heart, that this 
marble form was about to take life and walk once 
more among the people of the town. 

That same night Jules called at the house of 
I'Abbe Philippe. 

" Monsieur I'Abbe," said he, " I have finished 
the statue." 



i62 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

" Good! " answered the priest. " We can now 
have it removed to the Square and placed upon 
the pedestal, for that, too, is done." 

'' And when will it be unveiled. Monsieur le 
Cure?" 

" On the morning of the twenty-third at sun- 
rise. It was then, you remember, that Jean Be- 
noit first came among us." 



One evening just at dusk a man was walking 
along the dusty highway that leads southward 
and passes through the town of Beauchamp. 
The man was old and worn with constant travel. 
He wore a weather-stained cloak and hat, his 
feet were covered with a pair of peasant's shoes, 
and in his hand he carried a stout stick. The 
general impression that he gave, however, was 
not one of poverty; for his raiment, despite its 
soiled and dusty condition, was not old. He 
plodded on laboriously, stopping now and then 
to rest or to look backward over the road he had 
just travelled. At last he reached the northern 
gate of the town. Scarcely noticed by the old 
porter who stood ready to close the barrier for 
the night, he entered the paved street and slow- 
ly made his way toward the inn, situated about 
three hundred yards inside the town wall. As 
he reached this yard, wherein several horses were 
standing, he saw, by means of the great lamp that 
shone over the door, a girl drawing water from 
a well. He approached. 



JEAN BENOIT. 163 

'' Will you give me a drink, Mademoiselle? " 

The girl filled the cup and extended it to the 
traveller. "You have come a long way, Mon- 
sieur," said she, " and you are tired. We are 
full to-night, but perhaps there is room for you — 
I will see." 

" Thank you, Mademoiselle," repHed the man, 
** but I cannot stop." 

" Monsieur cannot go on to-night — the gates 
will soon be closed." 

" Yes, yes, I know — I have friends." 

" Where is Monsieur from? " 

" From — but I keep you, Mademoiselle." 

The stranger slipped a coin into the damsel's 
hand and slowly left the yard. 

When the old man reached the Town Square 
he stopped. It was now so dark that the few 
people who were still on the streets could not 
see him as he leaned close to the walls of a 
building. He was very weak. The long march 
that he had taken had told upon him, and now 
he would fain lie down to sleep. For some time 
he stood watching the lights as they shone from 
the windows looking out upon the Square. Sud- 
denly the sharp sound of hooifs and the distant 
clank of steel broke upon his ears; the bell at 
the town gate began to rmg; and as the old man 
tottered into the middle of the street, knowing 
too well what was the cause of this commotion, 
he saw a crowd, led by men with torches, bearing 
down upon him. At their head were eight or ten 



i64 AAT AMHERST BOOK. 

horsemen, their steel armor reflecting the yellow 
glare. And although still several hundred feet 
away from the approaching rabble, the old man 
plainly heard the cries of those who were direct- 
ing the soldiers. 

" God help me; I am lost! " he exclaimed. In- 
stinctively he turned to the right. At his side 
stood a tall, dark object. With feeble steps he 
went toward it. It was something covered with 
a heavy black cloth. He drew aside the folds. 
Even in that darkness the steps of a stone ped- 
estal caught his eye. " A statue to be unveiled," 
he thought. Quickly hiding within the folds 
of the black covering, he tried to ascend the 
steps. He fell; but no cry, no sound went forth 
into the night. Nearer came the soldiers and the 
excited rabble. The torches cast their light upon 
the statue of Jean Benoit wrapped in its sombre 
drapery. For a moment the crowd paused; and 
then, with another cry, above which was heard 
the order of the captain, " On, men, on ! He can- 
not escape us — it is the king's will ! " they once 
more took up the pursuit and were soon lost 
to hearing in the dark streets beyond. 



On the morning of the twenty-third, long be- 
fore sunrise, the streets of Beauchamp were 
crowded with people. The unsuccessful search 
made by the king's soldiers had kept many from 
their slumbers. During the entire night the cap- 
tain of the horsemen, thrusting the royal seal and 



JEAN BENOIT. 165 

signature into the face of those who objected^ 
had pried into those houses and yards wherein 
he thought the object of his search might be 
concealed. 

Among others, Jules Ninon had been rudely 
summoned from his bed and ordered in the name 
of the king to open his rooms for inspection. 
When the men finally left his house, satisfied 
that no one was hiding there, it was four o'clock 
in the morning. Already the eastern sky was- 
tinged with the glow of the coming dawn, and 
instead of returning to his couch the sculptor 
went to call the cure. He found him already 
dressed. 

"Did they find the man, Jules?" asked the 
cure, as they made their way toward the Town 
Square. 

"No, Monsieur le Cure; and they have been 
searching all night. They were rude enough to- 
think that / would harbor a state prisoner, for 
they have but just now left my house." 

" Who is he, Jules — what is the man's 
name? " 

" Mon Dieu! Monsieur FAbbe, I do not 
know; I was so afraid the soldiers would harm 
my studio I forgot to ask questions." 

" Is it known why the king wants this man? " 

" A court secret. Monsieur I'Abbe — so the 
captain said." 

" He will be free in half an hour, Jules. The 
gates will be open." 





//>J;'/f £:vr # z'^^//' 



/ -■ ■i.->n--^t'^r/€,\> 




JEAN BENOIT. 167 

'' No, Monsieur le Cure. They have doubled 
the guards, and all who go out are questioned." 

When the priest and the sculptor reached the 
Square, they found a large crowd waiting for 
them. Passing among the people, who bowed 
reverently as they went by, they entered the 
little enclosure at the foot of the statue. At that 
moment, with a loud clattering of hoofs and rat- 
tle of swords, the horseman entered the Square 
and drew rein at one side of the assembled 
throng. 

L'Abbe Philippe mounted a wooden stand 
and cast his eyes over the faces before him. Every 
moment the number was growing larger. Old 
and young were flocking hither to see the mem- 
orial of their blessed benefactor unveiled to the 
morning sun. Already it had risen above the 
eastern hills and was painting the chimneys and 
roofs with golden light. 

The cure extended his hands toward the peo- 
ple and they knelt upon the stone pavement. The 
soldiers alone remained upright, sitting motion- 
less upon their horses. Raising his eyes to 
heaven, the priest offered a short prayer for the 
memory of the good and saintly man who had 
come among them so long ago. When he had 
ended the people rose silently to their feet and 
pressed closer to catch every word. 

'' We have gathered,'' said the abbe, '' to 
honor him whose name shall never be forgot- 
ten. Thirty years ago, a terrible disease spread 



i68 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

among our homes. While we were suffering, God 
sent us a great man, who, as His minister, saved 
us from death. This morning — the same as that 
upon which he came — you may again be- 
hold his face; you may again see him as 
he walked among us in that dreadful season. 
Whene'er you shall look upon this statue raised 
by your generous hands, remember him in your 
prayers, and pray that his soul rests in peace." 

As the Abbe Philippe ceased speaking, he 
turned to Jules Ninon, who was at the foot of 
the pedestal, and raised his hand. The sculptor 
stepped back and pulled a cord. Instantly the 
black covering fell, and the marble figure of Jean 
Benoit stood bathed in glorious sunshine. 

A mighty shout arose from all the spectators. 
Hardly, however, had the walls of the surround- 
ing houses sent back the echo, when absolute si- 
lence fell upon the people; for there, at the top 
of the pedestal and extended under the feet of 
the statue, lay the Hfeless form of a man. The 
sculptor sprang up the stone steps and bent over 
the body. At the same instant the captain of 
the horsemen, followed by his men, pushed into 
the crowd. 

" Make room there, make room ! " shouted the 
officer. " In the king's name! It is he — the 
prisoner! Forward, men! " 

But ere the soldiers could force a passage, 
Jules Ninon rose from the dead man beneath 



JEAN BENOIT. i6g 

him and cried in a voice that penetrated every 
ear: 

''It is Jean Benoit! Jean Benoit!! Defend 
him, my townsmen! " 

The effect was wonderful. A thousand throats 
took up the cry, and Hke a mighty wave the mass 
surged toward the base of the statue. The sol- 
diers, unable to charge forward, so closely were 
the men and women pressed against the horses' 
sides, attempted to draw their swords; but the 
captain, seeing that resistance in the face of such 
enthusiasm would be folly, commanded the men 
to use no violence. When the wondering, ex- 
cited crowd could get no closer, and since they 
saw that the soldiers did not intend to use their 
weapons, they fixed their eyes upon the pair 
at the top of the pedestal. Slowly the shouts 
died away, and the square was again silent. 

Once more the cure stretched forth his hands. 
There was a heavenly light in his eyes, and his 
words were few: 

" My children, it is indeed Jean Benoit. God 
has sent him back to us that he may rest in 
peace. Take him. Bear him to the church, and 
lay him beneath our hallowed altar. He is with 
us forever."* 

Herman Babson, '93. 



*From The Independent, April, 1896. 



THE AMHEPST QT TO-DAY. 

The changes in the college buildings since 
1875 are not such as to appear conspicuously in 
the view on the opposite page; but there have 
been, nevertheless, important additions to and 
improvements in the college equipment. In the 
first place East College, which had become very 
dilapidated and went begging for tenants, was 
torn down, and its site graded and turfed. The 
college grounds were cleared up, the lawns im- 
proved, and walks of " concrete " laid in all di- 
rections. 

Since 1875 has occurred a loss by fire, of such 
magnitude that the burning of Old North Col- 
lege is a trifle in comparison. On the night of 
March 29, 1882, Walker Hall was burned. Only 
the outside walls remained standing, and all the 
valuable contents were destroyed. " The mathe- 
matical diagrams of Professor Esty, the astro- 
nomical calculations of Professor Todd — the 
work of years, the oiHcial and private papers of 
President Seelye, the apparatus of Professor 
Snell — much of it the invention of his own brain 
and the work of his own hand — all went up in 
flame and smoke." Most keenly felt of all was 
the loss of the entire mineralogical collection of 
Professor Shepard, the mere money value of 



172 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

which had been placed as high as one hundred 
thousand dollars. The calamity was a shock to 
all the college authorities, especially to President 
Seelye. But almost immediately he secured from 
the late Henry T. Morgan, of Albany, a gift 
which, together with the insurance, made it pos- 
sible to rebuild at once. The walls were strength- 
ened, and the two lower stories were rebuilt upon 
nearly the old lines. The third story, formerly 
occupied by the mineralogical collections, was 
reconstructed on an entirely new and better plan, 
-and used for recitation rooms. 

While the new Walker Hall was being built 
the library was enlarged to its present dimen- 
sions. The difficult problem of making an addi- 
tion larger than the original building, and of se- 
curing at the same time a harmonious and sym- 
metrical whole from an architectural point of 
view, was deftly solved by Francis R. Allen, class 
of '65. This work was not complete before 
Charles M. Pratt, '79, came forward with a hand- 
some gift for a new gymnasium, which was 
thrown open to the College in 1884. Amherst 
has always been noted for her system of physical 
culture, and Pratt Gymnasium is the worthy 
home of the department, having a complete 
equipment of apparatus and perfect appoint- 
ments to the smallest detail. Its spacious main 
hall is also the scene of the annual alumni din- 
ner and the two promenades of the year. 

In 1 891, a Biological Laboratory, with lecture 



THE AMHERST OF TO-DA Y. 173 

and reading rooms, was added to Appleton Cab- 
inet, and well equipped with microscopes and 
other apparatus. The new Chemical and Physical 
Laboratories — built under one roof, but entirely 
separate from each other — were ready for use in 
1894. President Seelye had for some years 
planned for the erection of a new chemical lab- 
oratory, but it was not made possible until part of 
the Fayerweather bequest came to the College. 
The double laboratory is an imposing structure, 
of stern and simple, yet tasteful exterior. No ex- 
pense was spared, however, in the effort to make 
the interior perfect and the equipment complete 
for the use of both departments. The Chemical 
Laboratory is the realization of plans which Pro- 
fessor Harris perfected after years of experience 
and visits to the best laboratories of Germany. 
The Physics Laboratory, which occupies the 
southern half of the building, was constructed 
under the supervision of Professor Kimball, and 
is splendidly arranged and equipped. 

Since 1892 the interiors of both North and 
South Colleges have been rebuilt, only the big 
"beams that supported the floors and the lines of 
the old rooms being retained. Steam heat, run- 
ning water, large fire-places and hardwood floors 
are among the innovations, which would doubt- 
less seem luxuries to the alumni who occupied 
the old rooms. The old Boltwood mansion, with 
its imposing pillars in front, is now a College 
iDoarding-house, and has been named Hitchcock 



174 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

Hall. The need of an infirmary for the proper 
care of sick students, so long felt at Amherst, is 
now to be supplied in the shape of the Pratt 
Health Cottage, given to the College by George 
D. Pratt, '93. It will be located about half a 
mile from the campus, on an elevated and quiet 
spot, and will be fully equipped with every con- 
venience for the care of the sick. 

The history of Amherst's material growth has 
been traced so gradually in these six sketches 
that the reader may not appreciate the truly won- 
derful changes wrought during the seventy-five 
years unless he turns abruptly from the accom- 
panying view of College Hill to that dated 1821. 
After comparing the two, who will attempt to 
picture the Amherst of 1971? Perhaps, by that 
time, the College will boast a new College Hall,^ 
a new Observatory, a College boarding-hall and a 
new dormitory. We can only hope that the con- 
trast with the present will be as pleasing as that 
between 1821 and 1896, which the progress of 
seventy-five years affords her sons to-day. 

Edward Clark Hood, '97. 




IN CAP AND GOWN. 

In cap and gown a motley crew 

Of Seniors flash upon my view, 
With dignified, yet dainty tread. 
Their gowns in glancing folds outspread, 

And caps with careless grace askew. 

Grave is their mien, and haughty, too; 
Vast is their knowledge, if you knew 
How unto Science and Art they're wed 
In cap and gown. 

What great high thought throbs through and 

through 
Each mighty brain? Can each review 

Some world-fraught scheme to thrill the dead? 
Ah, no ! 'Tis this that fills each head, 
" Where can I get a job to do 

" In cap and gown?" 

George Breed Zug, '93. 



SONG or THE SEA ELIGHT. 

Sing ho! sing ho! for the sailing, O! 

For the salt, salt surge and the winds that blow! 

And the foam that's flung from the rail, bent low 

O'er the roaring sea! 
Sing ho! then, loud, for the rattling shroud, 
The whistling gale, and the scudding cloud, 
And the gray gull soaring on pinions proud 

So far and free! 

Sing ho! for the stars that bloom at night! 
For the streaming wake^ soft-sown with light! 
And the face that shines in the moon's mist white 

Near, near, and sweet; 
For the tale oft-told that will ne'er grow old, 
The shy sweet glance, and the hand-clasp bold, 
And the mad wild music that young hearts hold 

When warm lips meet! 

Then ho! for the salt sea's breath divine! 

It thrills the blood like the rage of wine 

As, borne by long billows that shake and shine, 

We lose the lea! 
Unsullied the breezes sing and sweep; 
Forgot are dull shoreward hours that creep; 
With joy past naming our pulses leap 

Far out at sea! 

WORTHINGTON C. HOLMAN, '96. 







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MISUNDERSTOOD. 

"Oh, Dick! Are you here?" 

"Yes. What do you want? " gruffly replied 
the handsome young giant as he steadily pulled 
at his chest-weights on the wall of the luxurious 
study in the fraternity house. 

" What in the name of heaven are you doing 
up here such a night as this, when the most jolly 
reception our ' frat.' ever held is going on down- 
stairs?" asked his chum, Frank Lincoln. 

" You know I'm not a lady's man, Frank. The 
girls made me so nervous that I had to come up 
here to get quieted down a bit," (still pulling at 
the chest-weights). "It's worse than a football 
game for nerves." 

" Drop those chest-weights, old man! Your 
nerves! Ha! ha! Anybody would think you 
were a tea-drinking old maid instead of center 
rush on a football team. Come, get into your 
coat! I want you to meet my cousin Dora." 

" That haughty, fashionable Miss Van de 
Linde? I prefer to stay up here and work off 
my ' Psych ' conditions." 

" Oh, come along, you fool ! There's nothing 
aristocratic about her except her name. She's 
one of the most popular girls at Smith." 

" Miss Van de Linde, let me present my room- 



MISUNDERSTOOD 179 

mate, Mr. Aldrich. Miss Van de Linde has never 
seen our gTOunds, Dick." 

The night was one of those in May, when Am- 
herst is at its best. The Japanese lanterns on the 
veranda gave just Hght enough for a quiet stroll 
around the spacious lawn. The orchestra in the 
house was playing that dreamy Barcarole of 
Chopin, in which you hear the joyous tumult 
of the carnival fade away till you feel only the 
regular and gentle movement of the Venetian 
gondola, as it rocks on the waves of the bay. 
The apple and pear trees, then in full bloom, 
bathed the strollers with their dainty fragrance. 
Dick was intoxicated. Just what he said, or 
where they wandered Dick never knew, but he 
was ready to strangle Frank when he appeared 
beside them, saying: "The carriages are going, 
Dora, and your chaperon is hunting high and low 
for you." 

_ " Let up throwing things all over the room! 
We don't have this den picked up often enough 
so that we can aflford to have it all tumbled in 
a heap the first day. Pull on your chest-weights 
if you must do something! Dora seems to have 
completely hypnotized you to-night. Let's go 
down and finish those things left from the spread. 
Don't believe you took her in to supper at all." 

" Never thought of it." 

" Of course not, you good-natured egotist, you 
were in the seventh heaven when 1 found you, 



i8o AJV AMHERST BOOK. 

and you hardly seem to have recovered yet from 
that ecstatic state." 

Dick's livery bill soon grew to generous pro- 
portions. " Might as well live at Northampton 
all the time," said Frank to his chum one night a 
few weeks later, as he returned from a call at 
Smith. 

" That wouldn't be so bad," repHed Dick, in 
the best of humor. He never seemed bored now 
when the boys talked about the girls. 

" Solomon in all his glory ! " cried Frank one 
morning in June, coming into the room just as 
Dick was going out arrayed in his new summer 
suit and wearing a smile that illuminated the 
room. 

" Where now, Dick? " 

" Whately Glen." 

"With Dora?" 

" Yes." 

"Chaperon?" 

" No." 

" You know that's as good as an announce- 
ment of your engagement? " 

"I don't care!" 

"But Dora?" 

" She's willing." 

Throwing his notebook at the desk, his cap 
in the corner, and dropping on the couch, Frank 
gave vent to a prolonged whistle. 

"Well?" 

" Her mother always expected her to marry in 



MISUNDERSTOOD. i8i 

their own swell set, and I don't know how she 
will take it." 

*' I admit that I am not one of the * Four Hun- 
dred/ but father will give me a big start, and we 
can live in good shape. I'm no impecunious ad- 
venturer. Besides they are not rich." 

" No, but they are proud, blue-blooded and 
aristocratic." 

But all this had little terror for Dick, who, too 
happy to look on the dark side of anything, went 
oflf whistling and swinging his cane. 

After dinner, slinging his botany can over his 
shoulder, Frank set out for the Hadley meadows 
to get specimens to finish his herbarium. Half 
way down the Amity street hill he met Dick. 
With head down, hat pulled over his eyes, and 
rigid iface he was urging on the exhausted horse, 
already covered with sweat and foam. 

'' Hold on, you brute! " shouted Frank, as he 
caught the horse by the bridle. He loved horses 
and would never see them abused. " What do 
you mean by driving Hke a madman when the 
mercury is up in the 90s? " 

" Let me alone! " growled Dick fiercely as he 
reached for the whip. 

"What's the matter with you, anyhow? T 
never saw you act like this before." 
" Nothing." 
"Where's Dora?" 
" 'Hamp." 
" Quarrel? " 



i82 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

" If you think I'm going to tell you, you are 
mistaken, Frank Lincoln. You are no Father 
confessor. Don't you dare mention her to me 
again. I'm done ! " 

' '■ Vanitas vanitatum! What in the world made 
them quarrel?" mused Frank as he searched for 
specimens. " I'm sure she loved him. I'm afraid 
he will take it hard." 

They were both graduated before the end ot 
the month, he from Amherst, she from Smith. 
He went abroad for extended travels, while she 
threw herself into the gay life at Newport. Both 
were bitter and unforgiving; both thought that 
their love had been thrown away on an unworthy 
object. 

The Carnival was at its height when Dick sat 
in a Venetian cafe reading the Paris edition of 
the Herald, while he waited for his breakfast. 
A familiar name in the society notes from New 
York caught his eye, and he read : 

" Mrs. Van de Linde and her beautiful and 
accomplished daughter, who has been the life 
of the Four Hundred during the winter, have 
gone south for a few weeks. They will return in 
time for the post- Lenten gayetes. 

"Just as I thought! " commented Dick, as he 
crushed the paper in his hands. " She never 
cared for me. It was a good thing she found it 
out that day at Whately. What right has a so- 
ciety girl to say that I care for nothing but self? " 



MISUNDERSTOOD. • 1B3 

he asked furiously as he seized his hat and went 
out without eating his breakfast. 

" I met a college friend of Frank's at Rome, 
Dora," said one of her friends, who was just 
home from a mid-winter cruise through the Med- 
iterranean. " He was just splendid to Mamma 
and me. He was a regular Apollo, but he didn't 
seem to have a bit of ambition to do anything 
except enjoy himself. He hadn't the least idea 
where he was going next or when he was com- 
ing back to America." 

" What was his name? " 

" Mr. Aldrich. I think he said he was Frank's 
chum in college. Do you know him? " 

" I met him at an Amherst reception." 

" What? You are not going now, Dora? 1 
expected you to stay all the afternoon and hear 
about my trip." 

" I'm not feeling well this afternoon. Fll hear 
all about your foreign noblemen et cetera later. 
Good-bye." 

" Just as I thought — rich, handsome and self- 
ish," said Dora to herself, as she rode to the 
hotel. 

"Why, Dora! What are you crying about?" 
said Mrs. Van de Linde, coming into their apart- 
ments late in the afternoon and seeing her daugh- 
ter with swollen eyes and tear-stained cheeks. 

' * Don't talk to me now, Mamma. I'm not go- 
ing to the german at the Casino to-night." 




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MISUNDERSTOOD. 185 

"Shi— ne! Shi— ne!" cried the dirty httle 
bootblack, as he pushed his way through the 
crowd of men and women who were standing at 
the stern of the ferry-boat " Princeton," watch- 
ing the efforts of the " Puritan " to push her way 
through the floating ice that filled the harbor 
one afternoon in early March some two years 
later. " Shine, sir? " eyeing the ugly splashes of 
New York mud on a gentleman's shoes. The 
man nodded assent. 

" Yes, I like it well enough," replied the boy to 
some kindly questions. " But I want to get into 
some regular business. All dead except my 
mother. Yes, I'm an Italian." 

The boy took the bright, new quarter which 
the gentleman gave him and put it between his 
teeth, while he fumbled for the change. 

"That's all right. Don't mind the change." 

A frisky blast of March wind lifted a fat old 
German's hat and sent it rolling over the deck. 
The owmer, unconscious of the ridiculous figure 
which he cut, with red face, flying hair and out- 
stretched hands, pursued. " Donner und Blitscn!" 
he grunted as his hat continued to elude him. 
" Go it, Dutchey ! Go in ! Go in ! " shouted the 
deck-hands. At last the little bootblack caught 
the hat, but the German, unable to stop, sent the 
boy sprawHng on the deck, and the coin slipped 
from his mouth and went rolling swiftly across 
the floor. In an instant the boy was after it. It 
passed under the gate, but the swell of a passing 



i§6 AN AMHERST BOOK. 

steamer made the ferry-boat roll, and the coin 
dropped easily on its side. 

" Come back ! Stop ! " cried many voices as 
the boy crawled under the gate to regain his 
money. Another fierce 'blast of wind swept 
around the boat and made the men cling to their 
hats. The boy clutched wildly at the gate, but it 
was too late, for the wind caught him and 
hurled him into the swirling, foamy waves be- 
hind. Men shouted, cursed and ran for life-pre- 
servers and ropes; women screamed and wrung 
their hands. The only man who kept his head 
was the one who had given the lad the money. 
He threw off his coat, opened the gate and leaped 
far out toward the little figure sinking in the icy 
water. 

" Come inside the cabin, Dora! This is ter- 
rible! You are trembling like a leaf. What made 
that foolish man throw away his life for that 
worthless little bootblack? " 

Dora Van de Linde did not reply. Her eyes 
were fixed on her long lost lover, now battling 
against those deadly waves to save a poor little 
street Arab. Selfish? Never! In that moment 
she knew that in her pride she had misjudged 
the man whom she truly loved. With clenched 
hands and blanched face she watched the life 
and death struggle. " He's reached him ! " shout- 
ed the crowd; but the shout was quickly followed 
by a groan, '' They are gone! " A great cake 
of floating ice had struck the two and driven 



MISUNDERSTOOD. 187 

them beneath those black, cruel waves. No, they 
were up again! The ferry-boat had stopped and 
was moving cautiously toward them. Nearer and 
nearer it came, till a noosed line was thrown to 
them, and the chilled, exhausted and bleeding 
rescued and rescuer were drawn on board. 

A few minutes later the hero opened his eyes 
in the ladies' cabin, and looked up wonderingly 
into the face of the beautiful woman, who, un- 
mindful of his dripping garments and the curi- 
ous crowd of spectators, knelt beside him wildly 
chaffing his benumbed hands, while the tears 
coursed down her cheeks. 

" Dick! Oh, Dick! Forgive me! I was all 
wrong," she sobbed. 

" Dora, my darling! " was all he said, but it 
was enough to make her happy. 

Ernest Merrill Bartlett, '94. 




AMHERST GOOD-BYE 50MG. 



Air: " Es ritten drei Reiter.' 



We come, college scenes, with that sacred last 
word, 

Good-bye; 
That sound sad and tender wherever 'tis heard — 

Good-bye ; 
Our hearts' allegiance around you is twined 
For here are memories golden enshrined; 

Good-bye, good-bye, goodrbye, 

The hour of parting is nigh. 

11. 

Fair campus and grove, with your background of 
hills, 

Good-bye; 
Old buildings, the scene of our joys and our ihs. 

Good-bye; 
Full many a spot more imposing is found. 
But none to which such affections are bound; 

Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, 

The hour of parting is nigh. 



AMHERST GOOD-BYE SONG. 189 

III. 

And you who have borne with our folHes and 
pranks, 
Good-bye; 
We bring you, dear teachers, our love and our 
thanks, 
Good-bye ; 
Our Hves will show what we've missed or have 

won, 
But honor to you for the work you have done; 
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye. 
The hour of parting is nigh. 

IV. 

The world now invites us; from college we're 

free, 

Good-bye; 

And no one can tell what the future will be — 

Good-bye; 
But where'er we are, or whatever we do, 

Enough if to Amherst ideals we are true ; 

Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye. 

On thee be the blessing Most High! 

John F. Genung. 




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